EC2 Purchasing Models Overview
AWS offers several purchasing options to optimize costs based on workload requirements, predictability, and flexibility. Choosing the right model depends on whether you have steady-state, interruptible, or specific hardware-isolation needs.
On-Demand: Pay by the second for compute capacity; no long-term commitment.
Reserved Instances: Provide capacity reservation and discounts for 1 or 3-year commitments.
Savings Plans: Offer lower prices for a commitment to a consistent amount of compute usage ($/hour).
Spot Instances: Utilize unused EC2 capacity at significant discounts (up to 90%) but are interruptible.
Dedicated Hosts: Physical servers fully dedicated to your account for compliance or BYOL requirements.
Dedicated Instances: Instances running in a VPC on hardware dedicated to a single customer.