Amazon EC2 VPS Review
Amazon EC2 was founded in 2006.
It is headquartered in the USA.
It offers VPS, Database, Storage and Networking hosting products.
- Australia
- Bahrain
- Brazil
- Canada
- China
- France
- Germany
- India
- Indonesia
- Ireland
- Italy
- Japan
- Singapore
- South Africa
- South Korea
- Sweden
- United Kingdom
- United States
This provider is related to Amazon Lightsail
Lightsail is the low price, simple VPS offering from Amazon
Features included with VPS
Features not included in the VPS price are marked as missing below.
| Feature | Value | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| Hourly Billing | Yes | |
| DDOS Protection | No | Not included by default but AWS offers lots of tools to mitigate DDOS attacks for a fee. |
| Backups | No | Available but charged at the EBS pricing rate. |
| Control Panel | Builtin | |
| SSH Keys Setup | Yes | |
| Total Number of Datacenters | 22 | |
| Number of Datacenter Continents | 4 | |
| Monitoring Charts | Yes | Here again, the charts are the most detailed and varied of all providers. |
| Admin REST API | Yes | |
| Upgrade VPS from admin console | No | |
| Mobile Friendly UI | No | |
| Reverse DNS | Yes | Possible but only on optional Elastic IP addresses. Those addresses are free while attached to an instance. |
| Accepted Forms of Payment | Credit cards | |
| Hidden CPU Model | No | |
| Affiliate Program | No | |
| Firewall | Yes | Allows creation of "security groups" with inbound and outbound rules. A security group can be assigned to an instance. |
| Shelving | Yes | "We don't charge usage for a stopped instance, or data transfer fees, but we do charge for the storage for any Amazon EBS volumes." |
Pros and Cons
Strengths
- Numerous datacenter locations.
- The largest catalog of cloud services you can find.
Weaknesses
- Not the easiest UI.
- Storage speed throttled based on volume size.
Amazon EC2 Extra Services
In addition to features included in the VPS plan, Amazon EC2 also offers the following services (possibly for a fee):
| Backups | Block storage | Object storage | Load balancer | Floating IP addresses |
| Team Management | Managed databases | Serverless | DDoS protection | Kubernetes |
| GPU instances |
CPUs
These are all the CPU types we have seen in Amazon EC2 instances per plan and time period.
Amazon EC2 CPUsVPS Instance Provisioning Time
For each Amazon EC2 VPS trial, we measured how long it took to provision the server.
See also VPS provisioning times for all providers.
| Average Provisioning Time | Min Provisioning Time | Max Provisioning Time | Number of VPS Samples |
|---|---|---|---|
| 23s | 10s | 50s | 10 |
Admin UI Screenshots
Cloud Storage Prices
For a comparison of storage features and prices from all providers, please check the Cloud Storage Prices page.
| Storage Type | Price / GB / month | Restriction | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Object | $0.023 | Price for the first 50TB, slightly lower for larger sizes. |
S3 standard.
AWS S3 also offers infrequent access and Glacier object storage for lower prices.
https://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/ |
| Block | $0.045 |
Throughput Optimized HDD (st1) Volumes
https://aws.amazon.com/ebs/pricing/ |
|
| Block | $0.080 |
General purpose SSD (gp3).
AWS also offer cold HDD for $0.025/GB/month.
https://aws.amazon.com/ebs/pricing/ |
Compare all Amazon EC2 plans in the Screener
The Screener shows all Amazon EC2 plans side by side with their grades in 5 categories.
Amazon EC2 Plans
Plan Specifications
| URL | https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/on-demand/ |
|---|---|
| Price per month |
$7.49
Warning: storage costs are not included in this price.
Warning: network bandwidth costs are not included in this price.
|
| Discount or Surcharge for long or short term use |
Discount Discounted monthly price: $4.75 Minimum continuous use for discount: 365 days |
| Disk GB | 20 |
| Num Cores | 2 |
| Memory GB | 1.0 |
| Hourly Billing | Yes |
| Virtualization | Nitro |
| Data Transfer GB | 0 |
| Burstable CPU | Per core CPU allocation: 10% |
| Dedicated CPU | No |
Performance Test Results
We conducted 5 different types of tests during the latest trial for Amazon EC2 - t3.micro. Review the results and compare this plan to its competitors.
| Live Web | Remote Timings | Network Transfers | Sysbench | Endurance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Review | Review | Review | Review | Review |
| Compare | Compare | Compare | Compare | Compare |
Performance trials run on the t3.micro plan
This plan was tested 1 times at vpsbenchmarks.com. The table below shows all trials run on the t3.micro plan with its grade and CPU type.
| Start of Trial | CPU | Datacenter | Overall Grade |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jun 03 2019 | Intel(R) Xeon(R) Platinum 8175M CPU @ 2.50GHz | us-east-1a | D |
Plan Specifications
| URL | https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/on-demand/ |
|---|---|
| Price per month |
$14.98
Warning: storage costs are not included in this price.
Warning: network bandwidth costs are not included in this price.
|
| Discount or Surcharge for long or short term use |
Discount Discounted monthly price: $9.49 Minimum continuous use for discount: 365 days |
| Disk GB | 8 |
| Num Cores | 2 |
| Memory GB | 2.0 |
| Hourly Billing | Yes |
| Virtualization | KVM |
| Data Transfer GB | 1000 |
| Burstable CPU | Per core CPU allocation: 20% |
| Dedicated CPU | No |
Plan Grades
Grades are calculated by combining results from web, sysbench, endurance and remote timing tests. Grade A is best, grade F is worst.
Follow the letter links to find the test results backing the grade.
More details about grades calculation
Overall Score: 46
| Web Performance | Raw CPU Power | Performance Stability | Disk IO Performance | Network Performance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| D | C | E | D | B |
Note: A low grade on a low price VPS does not necessarily mean the VPS is underperforming, the server may still perform better than other servers at the same price. Use the Price Weighted Grades or the Best VPS 2021 rankings to find the best VPS in each price range.
Performance Test Results
We conducted 6 different types of tests during the latest trial for Amazon EC2 - t3.small. Review the results and compare this plan to its competitors.
| Web Runs | Live Web | Network Transfers | Remote Timings | Sysbench | Endurance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Review | Review | Review | Review | Review | Review |
| Compare | Compare | Compare | Compare | Compare | Compare |
Performance trials run on the t3.small plan
This plan was tested 2 times at vpsbenchmarks.com. The table below shows all trials run on the t3.small plan with its grade and CPU type.
| Start of Trial | CPU | Datacenter | Overall Grade |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 17 2020 | Intel(R) Xeon(R) Platinum 8259CL CPU @ 2.50GHz | us-east-1a | D |
| Jan 29 2019 | Intel(R) Xeon(R) Platinum 8175M CPU @ 2.50GHz | us-east-1a | C |
Plan Specifications
| URL | http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/ |
|---|---|
| Price per month |
$16.56
Warning: storage costs are not included in this price.
Warning: network bandwidth costs are not included in this price.
|
| Discount or Surcharge for long or short term use |
Discount Discounted monthly price: $10.51 Minimum continuous use for discount: 365 days |
| Disk GB | 8 |
| Num Cores | 1 |
| Memory GB | 2.0 |
| Hourly Billing | Yes |
| Virtualization | Xen |
| Data Transfer GB | 250 |
| Burstable CPU | Per core CPU allocation: 20% |
| Dedicated CPU | No |
Performance Test Results
We conducted 1 different types of tests during the latest trial for Amazon EC2 - t2-small. Review the results and compare this plan to its competitors.
Performance trials run on the t2-small plan
This plan was tested 5 times at vpsbenchmarks.com. The table below shows all trials run on the t2-small plan with its grade and CPU type.
| Start of Trial | CPU | Datacenter | Overall Grade |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mar 24 2018 | Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2676 v3 @ 2.40GHz | us-east-1a | C |
Plan Specifications
| URL | https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/a1/ |
|---|---|
| Price per month |
$18.36
Warning: storage costs are not included in this price.
Warning: network bandwidth costs are not included in this price.
|
| Discount or Surcharge for long or short term use |
Discount Discounted monthly price: $11.75 Minimum continuous use for discount: 365 days |
| Disk GB | 20 |
| Num Cores | 1 |
| Memory GB | 2.0 |
| Hourly Billing | Yes |
| Virtualization | Nitro |
| Data Transfer GB | 100 |
| Burstable CPU | No |
| Dedicated CPU | No |
Performance Test Results
We conducted 2 different types of tests during the latest trial for Amazon EC2 - a1.medium. Review the results and compare this plan to its competitors.
Trials
This plan went through "light" testing 1 times at vpsbenchmarks.com. The table below shows all light trials run on the a1.medium plan.
Light trials are sysbench and transfer tests only.
Plan Specifications
| URL | https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/ |
|---|---|
| Price per month |
$27.07
Warning: storage costs are not included in this price.
Warning: network bandwidth costs are not included in this price.
|
| Discount or Surcharge for long or short term use |
Discount Discounted monthly price: $17.28 Minimum continuous use for discount: 365 days |
| Disk GB | 0 |
| Num Cores | 2 |
| Memory GB | 4.0 |
| Hourly Billing | Yes |
| Virtualization | Nitro |
| Data Transfer GB | 0 |
| Burstable CPU | Per core CPU allocation: 20% |
| Dedicated CPU | No |
Plan Grades
Grades are calculated by combining results from web, sysbench, endurance and remote timing tests. Grade A is best, grade F is worst.
Follow the letter links to find the test results backing the grade.
More details about grades calculation
Overall Score: 28
Performance Test Results
We conducted 6 different types of tests during the latest trial for Amazon EC2 - t3a.medium. Review the results and compare this plan to its competitors.
| Web Runs | Live Web | Network Transfers | Remote Timings | Sysbench | Endurance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Review | Review | Review | Review | Review | Review |
| Compare | Compare | Compare | Compare | Compare | Compare |
Performance trials run on the t3a.medium plan
This plan was tested 1 times at vpsbenchmarks.com. The table below shows all trials run on the t3a.medium plan with its grade and CPU type.
| Start of Trial | CPU | Datacenter | Overall Grade |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nov 04 2019 | AMD EPYC 7571 | us-east-1a | E |
Plan Specifications
| URL | https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/on-demand/ |
|---|---|
| Price per month | $28.20 |
| Discount or Surcharge for long or short term use |
No |
| Disk GB | 40 |
| Num Cores | 2 |
| Memory GB | 4.0 |
| Hourly Billing | Yes |
| Virtualization | Nitro |
| Data Transfer GB | 0 |
| Burstable CPU | Per core CPU allocation: 20% |
| Dedicated CPU | No |
Plan Grades
Grades are calculated by combining results from web, sysbench, endurance and remote timing tests. Grade A is best, grade F is worst.
Follow the letter links to find the test results backing the grade.
More details about grades calculation
Overall Score: 54
Performance Test Results
We conducted 4 different types of tests during the latest trial for Amazon EC2 - t4g.medium. Review the results and compare this plan to its competitors.
| Web Runs | Network Transfers | Sysbench | Endurance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Review | Review | Review | Review |
| Compare | Compare | Compare | Compare |
Performance trials run on the t4g.medium plan
This plan was tested 1 times at vpsbenchmarks.com. The table below shows all trials run on the t4g.medium plan with its grade and CPU type.
| Start of Trial | CPU | Datacenter | Overall Grade |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 15 2020 | Neoverse-N1 | Virginia, USA | C |
Plan Specifications
| URL | https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/on-demand/ |
|---|---|
| Price per month |
$29.95
Warning: storage costs are not included in this price.
Warning: network bandwidth costs are not included in this price.
|
| Discount or Surcharge for long or short term use |
Discount Discounted monthly price: $19.05 Minimum continuous use for discount: 365 days |
| Disk GB | 8 |
| Num Cores | 2 |
| Memory GB | 4.0 |
| Hourly Billing | Yes |
| Virtualization | KVM |
| Data Transfer GB | 200 |
| Burstable CPU | Per core CPU allocation: 20% |
| Dedicated CPU | No |
Plan Grades
Grades are calculated by combining results from web, sysbench, endurance and remote timing tests. Grade A is best, grade F is worst.
Follow the letter links to find the test results backing the grade.
More details about grades calculation
Overall Score: 59
Performance Test Results
We conducted 6 different types of tests during the latest trial for Amazon EC2 - t3-medium. Review the results and compare this plan to its competitors.
| Web Runs | Live Web | Network Transfers | Sysbench | Remote Timings | Endurance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Review | Review | Review | Review | Review | Review |
| Compare | Compare | Compare | Compare | Compare | Compare |
Performance trials run on the t3-medium plan
This plan was tested 2 times at vpsbenchmarks.com. The table below shows all trials run on the t3-medium plan with its grade and CPU type.
| Start of Trial | CPU | Datacenter | Overall Grade |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 04 2020 | Intel(R) Xeon(R) Platinum 8259CL CPU @ 2.50GHz | us-east-1a | C |
| Aug 22 2018 | Intel(R) Xeon(R) Platinum 8175M CPU @ 2.50GHz | us-east-1a | C |
Plan Specifications
| URL | https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/on-demand/ |
|---|---|
| Price per month |
$33.41
Warning: storage costs are not included in this price.
Warning: network bandwidth costs are not included in this price.
|
| Discount or Surcharge for long or short term use |
Discount Discounted monthly price: $20.95 Minimum continuous use for discount: 365 days |
| Disk GB | 8 |
| Num Cores | 2 |
| Memory GB | 4.0 |
| Hourly Billing | Yes |
| Virtualization | KVM |
| Data Transfer GB | 250 |
| Burstable CPU | Per core CPU allocation: 20% |
| Dedicated CPU | No |
Performance Test Results
We conducted 2 different types of tests during the latest trial for Amazon EC2 - t2-medium. Review the results and compare this plan to its competitors.
Performance trials run on the t2-medium plan
This plan was tested 3 times at vpsbenchmarks.com. The table below shows all trials run on the t2-medium plan with its grade and CPU type.
| Start of Trial | CPU | Datacenter | Overall Grade |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jul 22 2018 | Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2686 v4 @ 2.30GHz | us-east-1a | C |
| Jan 14 2018 | Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2676 v3 @ 2.40GHz | us-east-1a | C |
Plan Specifications
| URL | https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/ |
|---|---|
| Price per month |
$52.96
Warning: network bandwidth costs are not included in this price.
|
| Discount or Surcharge for long or short term use |
No |
| Disk GB | 40 |
| Num Cores | 2 |
| Memory GB | 4.0 |
| Hourly Billing | Yes |
| Virtualization | Nitro |
| Data Transfer GB | 0 |
| Burstable CPU | No |
| Dedicated CPU | No |
| Storage | Root storage for this plan is networked and triple replicated.
See https://aws.amazon.com/ebs/features/#Amazon_EBS_availability_and_durability for details. EBS gp2 storage 40GB included in price. |
Plan Grades
Grades are calculated by combining results from web, sysbench, endurance and remote timing tests. Grade A is best, grade F is worst.
Follow the letter links to find the test results backing the grade.
More details about grades calculation
Overall Score: 59
Performance Test Results
We conducted 4 different types of tests during the latest trial for Amazon EC2 - c6g.large. Review the results and compare this plan to its competitors.
| Web Runs | Network Transfers | Sysbench | Endurance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Review | Review | Review | Review |
| Compare | Compare | Compare | Compare |
Performance trials run on the c6g.large plan
This plan was tested 1 times at vpsbenchmarks.com. The table below shows all trials run on the c6g.large plan with its grade and CPU type.
| Start of Trial | CPU | Datacenter | Overall Grade |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nov 22 2020 | Neoverse-N1 | Virginia, USA | C |
Plan Specifications
| URL | https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/#Compute_Optimized |
|---|---|
| Price per month |
$59.44
Warning: network bandwidth costs are not included in this price.
|
| Discount or Surcharge for long or short term use |
No |
| Disk GB | 40 |
| Num Cores | 2 |
| Memory GB | 4.0 |
| Hourly Billing | Yes |
| Virtualization | Nitro |
| Data Transfer GB | 0 |
| Burstable CPU | No |
| Dedicated CPU | No |
Plan Grades
Grades are calculated by combining results from web, sysbench, endurance and remote timing tests. Grade A is best, grade F is worst.
Follow the letter links to find the test results backing the grade.
More details about grades calculation
Overall Score: 60
Performance Test Results
We conducted 4 different types of tests during the latest trial for Amazon EC2 - c5a.large. Review the results and compare this plan to its competitors.
| Web Runs | Network Transfers | Sysbench | Endurance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Review | Review | Review | Review |
| Compare | Compare | Compare | Compare |
Performance trials run on the c5a.large plan
This plan was tested 1 times at vpsbenchmarks.com. The table below shows all trials run on the c5a.large plan with its grade and CPU type.
| Start of Trial | CPU | Datacenter | Overall Grade |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jun 05 2020 | AMD EPYC 7R32 | Virginia, USA | C |
Plan Specifications
| URL | https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/#Compute_Optimized |
|---|---|
| Price per month |
$65.20
Warning: network bandwidth costs are not included in this price.
|
| Discount or Surcharge for long or short term use |
Discount Discounted monthly price: $36.50 Minimum continuous use for discount: 365 days |
| Disk GB | 40 |
| Num Cores | 2 |
| Memory GB | 4.0 |
| Hourly Billing | Yes |
| Virtualization | Nitro |
| Data Transfer GB | 0 |
| Burstable CPU | No |
| Dedicated CPU | No |
Plan Grades
Grades are calculated by combining results from web, sysbench, endurance and remote timing tests. Grade A is best, grade F is worst.
Follow the letter links to find the test results backing the grade.
More details about grades calculation
Overall Score: 52
Performance Test Results
We conducted 4 different types of tests during the latest trial for Amazon EC2 - c5.large. Review the results and compare this plan to its competitors.
| Web Runs | Network Transfers | Sysbench | Endurance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Review | Review | Review | Review |
| Compare | Compare | Compare | Compare |
Performance trials run on the c5.large plan
This plan was tested 2 times at vpsbenchmarks.com. The table below shows all trials run on the c5.large plan with its grade and CPU type.
| Start of Trial | CPU | Datacenter | Overall Grade |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jul 26 2020 | Intel(R) Xeon(R) Platinum 8124M CPU @ 3.00GHz | Virginia, USA | C |
| Aug 20 2019 | Intel(R) Xeon(R) Platinum 8124M CPU @ 3.00GHz | us-east-1a | B |
Plan Specifications
| URL | https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/ |
|---|---|
| Price per month |
$65.90
Warning: network bandwidth costs are not included in this price.
|
| Discount or Surcharge for long or short term use |
Discount Discounted monthly price: $44.15 Minimum continuous use for discount: 365 days |
| Disk GB | 40 |
| Num Cores | 2 |
| Memory GB | 8.0 |
| Hourly Billing | Yes |
| Virtualization | KVM |
| Data Transfer GB | 100 |
| Burstable CPU | No |
| Dedicated CPU | No |
Plan Grades
Grades are calculated by combining results from web, sysbench, endurance and remote timing tests. Grade A is best, grade F is worst.
Follow the letter links to find the test results backing the grade.
More details about grades calculation
Overall Score: 57
Performance Test Results
We conducted 4 different types of tests during the latest trial for Amazon EC2 - m5a.large. Review the results and compare this plan to its competitors.
| Web Runs | Network Transfers | Sysbench | Endurance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Review | Review | Review | Review |
| Compare | Compare | Compare | Compare |
Performance trials run on the m5a.large plan
This plan was tested 2 times at vpsbenchmarks.com. The table below shows all trials run on the m5a.large plan with its grade and CPU type.
| Start of Trial | CPU | Datacenter | Overall Grade |
|---|---|---|---|
| May 21 2020 | AMD EPYC 7571 | Virginia, USA | C |
| Mar 31 2019 | AMD EPYC 7571 | us-east-1a | D |
Plan Specifications
| URL | https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/ |
|---|---|
| Price per month |
$73.12
Warning: network bandwidth costs are not included in this price.
|
| Discount or Surcharge for long or short term use |
Discount Discounted monthly price: $48.53 Minimum continuous use for discount: 365 days |
| Disk GB | 40 |
| Num Cores | 2 |
| Memory GB | 8.0 |
| Hourly Billing | Yes |
| Virtualization | KVM |
| Data Transfer GB | 200 |
| Burstable CPU | No |
| Dedicated CPU | No |
Plan Grades
Grades are calculated by combining results from web, sysbench, endurance and remote timing tests. Grade A is best, grade F is worst.
Follow the letter links to find the test results backing the grade.
More details about grades calculation
Overall Score: 74
Performance Test Results
We conducted 6 different types of tests during the latest trial for Amazon EC2 - m5.large. Review the results and compare this plan to its competitors.
| Web Runs | Live Web | Network Transfers | Remote Timings | Sysbench | Endurance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Review | Review | Review | Review | Review | Review |
| Compare | Compare | Compare | Compare | Compare | Compare |
Performance trials run on the m5.large plan
This plan was tested 2 times at vpsbenchmarks.com. The table below shows all trials run on the m5.large plan with its grade and CPU type.
| Start of Trial | CPU | Datacenter | Overall Grade |
|---|---|---|---|
| Feb 21 2020 | Intel(R) Xeon(R) Platinum 8175M CPU @ 2.50GHz | us-east-1a | B |
| Nov 14 2018 | Intel(R) Xeon(R) Platinum 8175M CPU @ 2.50GHz | us-east-1a | C |
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