Amazon EC2 Review
Amazon EC2 was founded as a VPS provider 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 Arab Emirates
- United Kingdom
- United States
This provider is related to Amazon Lightsail
Lightsail is the low price, simple VPS offering from Amazon
Quick Links
| Amazon EC2 plans specs and prices | Plans |
| Amazon EC2 instance types | Instance Types |
| How fast are Amazon EC2 servers? Check them out in the Screener | Screener |
| List of Amazon EC2 trials | Trials |
| Review CPU models found in Amazon EC2 trials | CPUs |
| Performance variations of Amazon EC2 VPS over the long term | Consistency |
| List of Amazon EC2 yabs.sh results | Yabs |
Amazon EC2 VPS Features
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 | |
| IPv6 support | Yes | |
| 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 VPS plans, 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 | Private network |
VPS Instance Provisioning Time
For each Amazon EC2 VPS trial, we measured how long it took to provision the server from the moment it was ordered to the moment it accepted SSH connections.
See also VPS provisioning times for all providers.
| Average Provisioning Time | Min Provisioning Time | Max Provisioning Time | Number of VPS Samples |
|---|---|---|---|
| 26s | 10s | 40s | 6 |
Control Panel 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 | Description | Restriction |
|---|---|---|---|
| Object | $0.023 |
S3 standard.
AWS S3 also offers infrequent access and Glacier object storage for lower prices.
https://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/ |
Price for the first 50TB, slightly cheaper for monthly transfers over 50TB. |
| Block | $0.045 |
Throughput Optimized HDD (st1) Volumes
https://aws.amazon.com/ebs/pricing/ |
|
| Block | $0.100 |
gp2 is the default EBS volume type for Amazon EC2 instances (SSD).
https://aws.amazon.com/ebs/volume-types/ |
|
| Block | $0.080 |
General purpose SSD (gp3). IOPS and throughput are charged extra.
AWS also offer cold HDD for $0.025/GB/month.
https://aws.amazon.com/ebs/pricing/ |
Network Bandwidth Prices
These are the network bandwidth prices charged by Amazon EC2 for outbound transfers from VPS to the internet.
For a comparison of bandwidth prices from all providers, go to the Network Bandwitdh Prices page.
| Description | Price / GB |
|---|---|
|
Pricing model: Allowance Then Charged
(the provider gives a free bandwidth allowance with each server. Bandwidth above the free allowance is charged by the provider.)
Free allowance: 100 GB / month
(for a 2 core 4GB instance or closest available)
Transfer pool: yes
https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/on-demand/
|
Between 0TB and 10TB: $0.090/GB Between 10TB and 50TB: $0.085/GB Between 50TB and 150TB: $0.070/GB Above 150TB: $0.050/GB |
Amazon EC2 Instance Types and Plans
Note: All VPS prices reported at VPSBenchmarks are for one month without any further commitment and before promotions unless noted otherwise. The IPv4 charge is added to the VPS monthly price in case the provider doesn't include it by default.
| Plan | Number of CPU cores | RAM | Storage | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Family: General purpose Instance Type: M6a |
Amazon EC2 M6a instances are powered by 3rd generation AMD EPYC processors and are an ideal fit for general purpose workloads.
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| m6a.large | 2 | 8.0GB | 40GB | $65.12 / month |
| Family: Memory optimized Instance Type: R6a |
Amazon EC2 R6a instances are powered by 3rd generation AMD EPYC processors and are an ideal fit for memory intensive workloads.
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| VPSBenchmarks has not tested any plan for this instance type yet. | ||||
| Family: Compute optimized Instance Type: C7g |
Amazon EC2 C7g instances are powered by Arm-based AWS Graviton3 processors. They deliver the best price performance in Amazon EC2 for compute-intensive applications.
|
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| c7g.medium | 1 | 2.0GB | 20GB | $27.74 / month |
| Family: General purpose Instance Type: M5d |
Amazon EC2 M5 instances are the latest generation of General Purpose Instances powered by Intel Xeon® Platinum 8175M processors. This family provides a balance of compute, memory, and network resources, and is a good choice for many applications.
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| m5d.large (Off rankings) | 2 | 8.0GB | 75GB | $81.36 / month |
| m5d.xlarge (Off rankings) | 4 | 16.0GB | 150GB | $162.72 / month |
| m5d.2xlarge (Off rankings) | 8 | 32.0GB | 300GB | $325.44 / month |
| Family: General purpose Instance Type: M5 |
Amazon EC2 M5 instances are the latest generation of General Purpose Instances powered by Intel Xeon® Platinum 8175M processors. This family provides a balance of compute, memory, and network resources, and is a good choice for many applications.
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| m5.large | 2 | 8.0GB | 40GB | $73.12 / month |
| Family: General purpose Instance Type: M6g |
Amazon EC2 M6g instances are powered by Arm-based AWS Graviton2 processors. They deliver up to 40% better price/performance over current generation M5 instances and offer a balance of compute, memory, and networking resources for a broad set of workloads. |
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| VPSBenchmarks has not tested any plan for this instance type yet. | ||||
| Family: General purpose Instance Type: M6i |
Amazon EC2 M6i instances are powered by 3rd generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors (code named Ice Lake). This family provides a balance of compute, memory, and network resources, and is a good choice for many applications.
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| VPSBenchmarks has not tested any plan for this instance type yet. | ||||
| Family: Compute optimized Instance Type: C6a |
Amazon C6a instances are powered by 3rd generation AMD EPYC processors and are designed for compute-intensive workloads.
|
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| c6a.large | 2 | 4.0GB | 40GB | $59.08 / month |
| Family: Compute optimized Instance Type: C6g |
Amazon EC2 C6g instances are powered by Arm-based AWS Graviton2 processors. They deliver up to 40% better price performance over current generation C5 instances for compute-intensive applications. |
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| c6g.medium | 1 | 2.0GB | 20GB | $26.08 / month |
| c6gd.medium | 1 | 2.0GB | 67GB | $28.44 / month |
| c6g.large | 2 | 4.0GB | 40GB | $52.96 / month |
| Family: General purpose Instance Type: T4g |
Amazon EC2 T4g instances are powered by Arm-based custom built AWS Graviton2 processors and deliver up to 40% better price performance over T3 instances for a broad set of burstable general purpose workloads. T4g instances accumulate CPU credits when a workload is operating below baseline threshold. Each earned CPU credit provides the T4g instance the opportunity to burst with the performance of a full CPU core for one minute when needed. T4g instances can burst at any time for as long as required in Unlimited mode. |
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| t4g.small | 2 | 2.0GB | 40GB | $16.10 / month |
| t4g.medium | 2 | 4.0GB | 40GB | $28.20 / month |
| Family: General purpose Instance Type: T3 |
Amazon EC2 T3 instances are the next generation burstable general-purpose instance type that provide a baseline level of CPU performance with the ability to burst CPU usage at any time for as long as required. T3 instances offer a balance of compute, memory, and network resources and are designed for applications with moderate CPU usage that experience temporary spikes in use. |
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| t3.micro | 2 | 1.0GB | 20GB | $7.49 / month |
| t3.small | 2 | 2.0GB | 8GB | $14.98 / month |
| t3-medium | 2 | 4.0GB | 8GB | $29.95 / month |
| Family: General Purpose Instance Type: m7g |
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) M7g instances, powered by the latest generation AWS Graviton3 processors, provide the best price performance in Amazon EC2 for general purpose workloads. M7g instances are ideal for applications built on open-source software such as application servers, microservices, gaming servers, mid-size data stores, and caching fleets. They offer up to 25% better performance over the sixth-generation AWS Graviton2-based M6g instances. M7g instances feature Double Data Rate 5 (DDR5) memory, which provides 50% higher memory bandwidth compared to DDR4 memory to enable high-speed access to data in memory. |
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| m7g.medium | 1 | 4.0GB | 20GB | $30.98 / month |
| Instance Type: Other |
No description |
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| t2-small (Off rankings) | 1 | 2.0GB | 8GB | $16.56 / month |
| a1.medium (Off rankings) | 1 | 2.0GB | 20GB | $18.36 / month |
| t3a.medium | 2 | 4.0GB | 40GB | $31.00 / month |
| t2-medium (Off rankings) | 2 | 4.0GB | 8GB | $33.41 / month |
| c5a.large | 2 | 4.0GB | 40GB | $59.44 / month |
| c5.large | 2 | 4.0GB | 40GB | $65.20 / month |
| m5a.large | 2 | 8.0GB | 40GB | $65.90 / month |