While both provide hardware isolation from other customers, they offer different levels of visibility and control. Dedicated Instances ensure your instances run on isolated hardware, whereas Dedicated Hosts give you control over the physical server itself.

Key Differences

1
Visibility: Dedicated Hosts provide visibility into physical sockets and cores; Dedicated Instances do not.
2
Control: Dedicated Hosts allow you to control instance placement; Dedicated Instances are managed by AWS.
3
Use Case: Dedicated Hosts are ideal for 'Bring Your Own License' (BYOL) software; Dedicated Instances are typically used for regulatory compliance.
4
Billing: Dedicated Hosts are billed per host; Dedicated Instances are billed per instance.