Why Amazon EC2 Mac Instances?
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) Mac instances allow you to run on-demand macOS workloads in the cloud for the first time, extending the flexibility, scalability, and cost benefits of AWS to all Apple developers. By using Amazon EC2 Mac instances, you can create apps for the iPhone, iPad, Mac, Vision Pro, Apple Watch, Apple TV, and Safari. You can provision and access macOS environments within minutes, dynamically scale capacity as needed, and benefit from pay-as-you-go pricing.
To get started with EC2 Mac instances, please see Amazon EC2 User Guide or visit the Amazon EC2 macOS FAQs to learn more.
Supported Amazon EC2 Mac instances
Amazon EC2 M2 Pro Mac Instances
Amazon EC2 M2 Pro Mac Instances are built on Apple M2 Pro Mac mini computers and are powered by the AWS Nitro system. M2 Pro Mac instances combine native Arm64 macOS environments with 32GiB of RAM, delivering up to 35% faster performance compared to EC2 M1 Mac instances for iOS and macOS application build workloads. EC2 M2 Pro Mac instances support macOS version 13.2 and later as Amazon Machine Images (AMIs).
Amazon EC2 M2 Mac Instances
Amazon EC2 M2 Mac Instances are built on Apple M2 Mac mini computers and are powered by the AWS Nitro System. M2 Mac instances combine native Arm64 macOS environments with 24GiB of RAM, delivering up to 10% faster performance compared to EC2 M1 Mac instances for iOS and macOS application build workloads. EC2 M2 Mac instances support macOS version 13.2 and later as Amazon Machine Images (AMIs).
Amazon EC2 M1 Ultra Mac Instances
Amazon EC2 M1 Ultra Mac Instances are built on Apple M1 Ultra Mac Studio computers and are powered by the AWS Nitro System. M1 Ultra Mac instances combine native Arm64 macOS environments with 128GiB of RAM. EC2 M1 Ultra Mac instances support macOS Ventura (version 13) and later as Amazon Machine Images (AMIs).
Amazon EC2 M1 Mac instances
Amazon EC2 M1 Mac instances are built on Apple M1 Mac mini computers and are powered by the AWS Nitro System. These instances deliver up to 60% better price performance over x86-based EC2 Mac instances for iOS and macOS application build workloads. EC2 M1 Mac instances enable Arm64 macOS environments for the first time on AWS, and support macOS Big Sur (version 11) and later as Amazon Machine Images (AMIs).
x86-based EC2 Mac instances
x86-based EC2 Mac instances are built on Apple Mac mini computers, featuring Intel Core i7 processors, and are powered by the AWS Nitro System. These Mac instances support macOS Big Sur (version 11) and later as Amazon Machine Images (AMIs).
Overview of Amazon EC2 Mac Instances
Get started with Amazon EC2 Mac instances quickly
Visit our GitHub repository for helpful technical documents, guides, videos, and more. Learn how to setup Apple developer environments, build CI/CD pipelines, or test your Jamf workflows on x86 and Apple silicon-based EC2 Mac instances.
Benefits
Features
Product details
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x86-based EC2 Mac instances
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EC2 M1 Mac instances
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EC2 M1 Ultra Mac instances
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EC2 M2 Mac instances
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EC2 M2 Pro Mac instances
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x86-based EC2 Mac instances
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x86-based EC2 Mac instances are powered by a combination of Mac mini computers, which feature Intel’s eighth-generation 3.2 GHz (4.6 GHz turbo) Core i7 processors, 6 physical and12 logical cores, and 32 GiB of memory; and the AWS Nitro System, which provides up to 10 Gbps of Amazon VPC network bandwidth and 8 Gbps of Amazon EBS storage bandwidth through high-speed Thunderbolt 3 connections. x86-based EC2 Mac instances are uniquely enabled by the AWS Nitro System, which makes it possible to offer Mac mini computers as fully integrated and managed compute instances with Amazon VPC networking and Amazon EBS storage, just like any other Amazon EC2 instance. EC2 Mac instances are available in bare-metal instance size (mac1.metal) and support macOS Mojave (10.14), macOS Catalina (10.15), macOS Big Sur (11), and macOS Monterey (12) as AMIs.
Instance family Instance size Processor Physical cores vCPUs Memory (GiB) Instance storage Network bandwidth (Gbps) EBS bandwidth (Gbps) Mac1 mac1.metal Intel Core i7 6 12 32 EBS-Only 10 8 -
EC2 M1 Mac instances
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EC2 M1 Mac instances are powered by a combination of the AWS Nitro System, which provides up to 10 Gbps of Amazon VPC network bandwidth and 8 Gbps of Amazon EBS storage bandwidth through high-speed Thunderbolt connections; and Apple silicon Mac mini computers, which feature the M1 chip with 8 CPU cores, 8 GPU cores, 16 GiB of memory, and the 16-core Apple Neural Engine. EC2 M1 Mac instances are uniquely enabled by the AWS Nitro System, which makes it possible to offer Mac mini computers as fully integrated and managed compute instances with Amazon VPC networking and Amazon EBS storage, just like any other Amazon EC2 instance. EC2 M1 Mac instances support both macOS Big Sur (11) and macOS Monterey (12) as AMIs.
Instance family Instance size Processor Physical cores vCPUs Memory (GiB) Instance storage Network bandwidth (Gbps) EBS bandwidth (Gbps) Mac2 mac2.metal Apple M1 4 performance and 4 efficiency cores 8 16 EBS-Only 10 8 -
EC2 M1 Ultra Mac instances
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EC2 M1 Ultra Mac instances are powered by a combination of the AWS Nitro System, which provides up to 10 Gbps of Amazon VPC network bandwidth and 8 Gbps of Amazon EBS storage bandwidth through high-speed Thunderbolt connections; and Apple silicon Mac Studio computers, which feature the M1 Ultra chip with 20 CPU cores, 64 GPU cores, 128 GiB of memory, and the 32-core Apple Neural Engine. EC2 M1 Ultra Mac instances are uniquely enabled by the AWS Nitro System, which makes it possible to offer Mac Studio computers as fully integrated and managed compute instances with Amazon VPC networking and Amazon EBS storage, just like any other Amazon EC2 instance. EC2 M1 Ultra Mac instances support macOS Ventura (version 13) and later as Amazon Machine Images (AMIs).
Instance family Instance
sizeProcessor Physical cores vCPUs Memory (GiB) Instance storage Network bandwidth (Gbps) EBS bandwidth (Gbps) Mac2-m1ultra mac2-m1ultra.metal Apple M1 Ultra 16 performance and 4 efficiency 20 128 EBS-Only 10 8 -
EC2 M2 Mac instances
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EC2 M2 Mac instances are powered by a combination of the AWS Nitro System, which provides up to 10 Gbps of Amazon VPC network bandwidth and 8 Gbps of Amazon EBS storage bandwidth through high-speed Thunderbolt connections; and Apple silicon Mac mini computers, which feature the M2 chip with 8 CPU cores, 10 GPU cores, 24 GiB of memory, and the 16-core Apple Neural Engine. EC2 M2 Mac instances are uniquely enabled by the AWS Nitro System, which makes it possible to offer Mac mini computers as fully integrated and managed compute instances with Amazon VPC networking and Amazon EBS storage, just like any other Amazon EC2 instance. EC2 M2 Mac instances support macOS macOS Ventura (version 13) as Amazon Machine Images (AMIs).
Instance family Instance size Processor Physical cores vCPUs Memory (GiB) Instance storage Network bandwidth (Gbps) EBS bandwidth (Gbps) Mac2-m2 mac2-m2.metal Apple M2 4 performance and 4 efficiency cores 8 24 EBS-Only 10 8 -
EC2 M2 Pro Mac instances
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EC2 M2 Pro Mac instances are powered by a combination of the AWS Nitro System, which provides up to 10 Gbps of Amazon VPC network bandwidth and 8 Gbps of Amazon EBS storage bandwidth through high-speed Thunderbolt connections; and Apple silicon Mac mini computers, which feature the M2 Pro chip with 12 CPU cores, 19 GPU cores, 32 GiB of memory, and the 16-core Apple Neural Engine. EC2 M2 Pro Mac instances are uniquely enabled by the AWS Nitro System, which makes it possible to offer Mac mini computers as fully integrated and managed compute instances with Amazon VPC networking and Amazon EBS storage, just like any other Amazon EC2 instance. EC2 M2 Pro Mac instances support macOS Ventura (version 13) as AMIs.
Instance family Instance size Processor Physical cores vCPUs Memory (GiB) Instance storage Network bandwidth (Gbps) EBS bandwidth (Gbps) Mac2-m2pro mac2-m2pro.metal Apple M2 Pro 8 performance and 4 efficiency cores 12 32 EBS-Only 10 8
Pricing
Amazon EC2 Mac instances are available for purchase as Dedicated Hosts through the On-Demand and Savings Plans pricing models. Billing for EC2 Mac instances is per second with a 24-hour minimum allocation period to comply with the Apple macOS Software License Agreement. Through On Demand, you can launch an EC2 Mac host and be up and running within minutes. At the end of the 24-hour minimum allocation period, the host can be released at any time with no further commitment. With both Compute and Instance Savings Plans available, you can save up to 44 percent off On-Demand pricing with a 3-year commitment. For more information on Dedicated Hosts and complete pricing information, see the Dedicated Hosts pricing page. You can also access EC2 Mac instances pricing on the AWS Pricing Calculator for Dedicated Hosts.
Customer testimonials
Here are some examples of how customers and partners have achieved their business agility, price performance, cost savings, and sustainability goals with Amazon EC2 Mac instances.
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Pinterest
With EC2 Mac instances, we can scale our iOS build fleet, easily bake, roll back, and roll forward custom macOS environments with AMIs, and debug any build or test failures with fully reproducible macOS environments. Today, 100% of our production builds are running on EC2 Mac instances - our builds are 18.4% faster and 80.5% more reliable, - and our iOS developers love it!
Oliver Koo Senior Software Engineer, Pinterest -
Twitch
Now with EC2 Mac instances, I can spin up a new virtual machine in minutes, improve security by using EC2 Instance Profiles, and create, test, and roll-out a new Xcode AMI across all of our build agents 4x faster. These speed improvements enabled us to reduce our macOS fleet size by 50%.
Heath Borders Senior Mobile Engineer, Twitch -
Flipboard
We were able to easily migrate from our previous solution to EC2 Mac instances in three days. The setup has been very reliable, and we also enjoy the flexibility to use either command line or screen sharing. Build times have reduced from 20 minutes to 5 minutes. UI automation tests that used to take 3 hours now take less than 1 hour.
Colin Caufield Lead iOS Engineer, Flipboard -
The Pokémon Company International
We migrated our entire client build farm and Unity CI/CD to EC2 Mac instances to consolidate our build pipeline, take advantage of build automation, leverage CI/CD tooling such as Jenkins and TeamCity, and speed up build times. Now, we were thrilled that our Unity builds are 400 percent faster.
Carla Dreyer Senior Manager of DevOps Engineering, The Pokémon Company International -
Intuit
We’re experiencing up to 30 percent better performance over our data center infrastructure, thanks to elastic capacity expansion, and a high availability setup leveraging multiple zones. We’re now running around 80 percent of our production builds on EC2 Mac instances.
Pratik Wadher VP of Product Development, Intuit -
Riot Games
We consolidated our entire build pipeline on AWS (Windows, Linux, and now macOS). Our build pipeline currently supports ~100 builds per day, up to 3,000 builds per month, and our source control has over 270K commits to-date. With EC2 Mac instances, our build pipeline delivers a complete end-to-end cross-platform build process for Unity CI/CD in the AWS cloud.
Guy Kisel Staff Software Engineer, LoR, Riot Games