Amazon EC2 pricing¶

On-demand
- When use it:
  - for short-term
  - irregular workloads that cannot be interrupted.
  - Use cases:
    - developing and testing applications
    - running applications that have unpredictable usage patterns
- you pay only for compute time you use
- When don't use:
  - workloads that last a year or longer because these workloads can experience greater cost savings using Reserved Instances
Reserved instances
- uses for a 1-year or 3-year term
- Types:
  - Standard Reserved Instances: you need to specify a number of EC2 instances to run a specific OS, instance family and size, and tenancy in one Region
    - When use it
      - you know the EC2 instance type and size, AWS Region, os, tenancy
  - Convertible Reserved Instances: in different Availability Zones or different instance types
    - When use it:
      - you need to run your EC2 instances in different Availability Zones or different instance types,
EC2 instance saving plans: you need to make an hourly spend commitment to an instance family and Region for a 1-year or 3-year term.
- When use it:
  - you need flexibility in your Amazon EC2 usage over the duration of the commitment term
Spot instances
- When use it:
  - workloads with flexible start and end times, or that can withstand interruptions
  - cases:
    - the data processing job for a customer survey
Dedicated Hosts

References¶