Amazon Lightsail VPS Review
Amazon Lightsail was founded in 2016.
It is headquartered in the USA.
It offers VPS hosting products.
- Australia
- Canada
- France
- Germany
- India
- Ireland
- Japan
- Singapore
- South Korea
- United Kingdom
- United States
This provider is related to Amazon EC2
EC2 is the full featured cloud offering from Amazon
Quick Links
| Amazon Lightsail plans specs and prices | Plans |
| Review Amazon Lightsail plan grades in the Screener | Screener |
| Review CPU models found in Amazon Lightsail trials | CPUs |
| Performance variations of Amazon Lightsail VPS over the long term | Consistency |
Amazon Lightsail VPS Features
Features not included in the VPS price are marked as missing below.
| Feature | Value | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| Hourly Billing | Yes | |
| DDOS Protection | No | No DDoS protection by default. |
| Backups | No | Snapshots are available for a fee: |
| Control Panel | custom | |
| SSH Keys Setup | Yes | |
| Total Number of Datacenters | 13 | |
| Number of Datacenter Continents | 4 | |
| Monitoring Charts | Yes | CPU usage, CPU burst capacity. |
| Admin REST API | Yes | |
| Upgrade VPS from admin console | No | |
| Mobile Friendly UI | No | |
| Reverse DNS | No | No visible option to set the reverse DNS, even for a static IP. |
| Accepted Forms of Payment | Credit cards | |
| Hidden CPU Model | No | |
| Affiliate Program | No | |
| Firewall | Yes | Under networking. |
| Shelving | No |
Pros and Cons
Strengths
- Significantly lower prices than EC2.
- Large choice of datacenter locations.
- Access to a subset of AWS services.
Weaknesses
- Instances are throttled if you push them too hard.
Amazon Lightsail Extra Services
In addition to features included in VPS plans, Amazon Lightsail 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 Lightsail 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 53s | 40s | 90s | 8 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Snapshots | $0.050 | https://aws.amazon.com/lightsail/faq/#Billing_and_account_management | |
| Block | $0.100 | https://aws.amazon.com/lightsail/faq/#Lightsail_block_storage |
Amazon Lightsail Plans
Plan Specifications
| URL | https://aws.amazon.com/lightsail/pricing/ |
|---|---|
| Price per month | $5.00 |
| Discount or Surcharge for long or short term use |
No |
| Disk GB | 40 |
| Num Cores | 1 |
| Memory GB | 1.0 |
| Hourly Billing | Yes |
| Virtualization | Xen |
| Data Transfer GB | 2000 |
| Burstable CPU | Per core CPU allocation: 10% |
| Dedicated CPU | No |
Plan Grades
Screen Amazon Lightsail VPS Plans
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: 25
| Web Performance | Raw CPU Power | Performance Stability | Disk IO Performance | Network Performance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| D | F | D | F | E |
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 4 different types of tests during the latest trial for Amazon Lightsail - 1GB 1core. 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 1GB 1core plan
This plan was tested 9 times at vpsbenchmarks.com. The table below shows all trials run on the 1GB 1core plan with its grade and CPU type.
| Start of Trial | CPU | Datacenter | Overall Grade |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jul 12 2021 | Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2676 v3 @ 2.40GHz | Virginia, USA | E |
| Jul 19 2020 | Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2676 v3 @ 2.40GHz | Virginia, USA | D |
| Dec 26 2019 | Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2676 v3 @ 2.40GHz | us-east-1a | D |
| Mar 22 2019 | Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2676 v3 @ 2.40GHz | us-east-1a | E |
| Sep 06 2018 | Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2676 v3 @ 2.40GHz | us-east-1a | D |
| Apr 19 2018 | Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2676 v3 @ 2.40GHz | us-east-1a | D |
| Jul 30 2017 | Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2697 v4 @ 2.30GHz | us-east-2a | D |
| Jul 23 2017 | Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2676 v3 @ 2.40GHz | us-east-2a | |
| Dec 03 2016 | Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2676 v3 @ 2.40GHz | us-east-1b |
Plan Specifications
| URL | https://aws.amazon.com/lightsail/pricing/ |
|---|---|
| Price per month | $10.00 |
| Discount or Surcharge for long or short term use |
No |
| Disk GB | 60 |
| Num Cores | 1 |
| Memory GB | 2.0 |
| Hourly Billing | Yes |
| Virtualization | Xen |
| Data Transfer GB | 3000 |
| Burstable CPU | Per core CPU allocation: 25% |
| Dedicated CPU | No |
Plan Grades
Screen Amazon Lightsail VPS Plans
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: 33
| Web Performance | Raw CPU Power | Performance Stability | Disk IO Performance | Network Performance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| D | F | C | E | D |
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 4 different types of tests during the latest trial for Amazon Lightsail - 2GB 1core. 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 2GB 1core plan
This plan was tested 7 times at vpsbenchmarks.com. The table below shows all trials run on the 2GB 1core plan with its grade and CPU type.
| Start of Trial | CPU | Datacenter | Overall Grade |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 23 2020 | Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2686 v4 @ 2.30GHz | Virginia, USA | E |
| Apr 04 2020 | Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2686 v4 @ 2.30GHz | Virginia, USA | D |
| Oct 22 2019 | Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2686 v4 @ 2.30GHz | us-east-1a | D |
| Jan 20 2019 | Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2676 v3 @ 2.40GHz | us-east-1a | D |
| Jun 28 2018 | Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2686 v4 @ 2.30GHz | Virginia, USA | C |
| Oct 21 2017 | Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2676 v3 @ 2.40GHz | us-east-1a | C |
| Jan 29 2017 | Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2676 v3 @ 2.40GHz | us-east-1b |
Plan Specifications
| URL | https://aws.amazon.com/lightsail/pricing/ |
|---|---|
| Price per month | $20.00 |
| Discount or Surcharge for long or short term use |
No |
| Disk GB | 80 |
| Num Cores | 2 |
| Memory GB | 4.0 |
| Hourly Billing | Yes |
| Virtualization | Xen |
| Data Transfer GB | 4000 |
| Burstable CPU | Per core CPU allocation: 20% |
| Dedicated CPU | No |
Plan Grades
Screen Amazon Lightsail VPS Plans
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: 39
Performance Test Results
We conducted 4 different types of tests during the latest trial for Amazon Lightsail - 4GB 2cores. 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 4GB 2cores plan
This plan was tested 5 times at vpsbenchmarks.com. The table below shows all trials run on the 4GB 2cores plan with its grade and CPU type.
| Start of Trial | CPU | Datacenter | Overall Grade |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mar 21 2021 | Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2686 v4 @ 2.30GHz | Oregon, USA | D |
| May 16 2020 | Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2686 v4 @ 2.30GHz | Virginia, USA | D |
| Aug 07 2019 | Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2686 v4 @ 2.30GHz | Virginia, USA | C |
| Nov 05 2018 | Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2676 v3 @ 2.40GHz | us-east-1 | C |
| Jun 07 2018 | Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2676 v3 @ 2.40GHz | us-east-1a | C |
Plan Specifications
| URL | https://aws.amazon.com/lightsail/pricing/ |
|---|---|
| Price per month | $40.00 |
| Discount or Surcharge for long or short term use |
No |
| Disk GB | 160 |
| Num Cores | 2 |
| Memory GB | 8.0 |
| Hourly Billing | Yes |
| Virtualization | Xen |
| Data Transfer GB | 5000 |
| Burstable CPU | Per core CPU allocation: 70% |
| Dedicated CPU | No |
Plan Grades
Screen Amazon Lightsail VPS Plans
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: 45
Performance Test Results
We conducted 4 different types of tests during the latest trial for Amazon Lightsail - 8GB 2cores. 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 8GB 2cores plan
This plan was tested 3 times at vpsbenchmarks.com. The table below shows all trials run on the 8GB 2cores plan with its grade and CPU type.
| Start of Trial | CPU | Datacenter | Overall Grade |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 04 2020 | Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2686 v4 @ 2.30GHz | Virginia, USA | D |
| Feb 13 2020 | Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2686 v4 @ 2.30GHz | Virginia, USA | C |
| May 19 2019 | Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2686 v4 @ 2.30GHz | us-east-1a | C |
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