Amazon Lightsail Review

Amazon Lightsail

Features and Usability

Features not included in the VPS price are marked as missing below.

Last updated on May 19 2019.

Feature Value Comment
Hourly Billing  Yes
DDOS Protection  No

No DDoS protection by default.
DDoS protection available from AWS shield: https://aws.amazon.com/shield/
Backups  No

Snapshots are available for a fee:
"Lightsail snapshots cost $0.05/GB-month. That means if you take a snapshot of your 30 GB SSD instance and keep it for a month, you pay $1.50 at the end of the month. "
Control Panel  custom
SSH Keys Setup  Yes
Total Number of Datacenters  4
Number of Datacenter Continents  1
Monitoring Charts  Yes

CPU, Network In, Network Out, Status checks.
Admin REST API  Yes

URL: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/lightsail/2016-11-28/api-reference/Welcome.html
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.
SSH and HTTP are open by default. HTTPS is closed.

In VPSBenchmark's opinion

Feature Value Comment
UI Friendliness 

Options are stripped down to a minimum. It's very easy to get started.
Quality of Service 
  • Lightsail only offers the choice between 4 availability zones in the same datacenter (Virginia).
  • SSH keys from AWS can't be used in Lightsail.
Compare Features

Amazon Lightsail Extra Services

In addition to features included in the VPS plan, Amazon Lightsail also offers the following services (possibly for a fee):

Backups   Block Storage   Object Storage Load Balancer   Floating Ips
Teams Datastores Serverless Ddos Protection

Admin UI Screenshots


Cloud Storage Prices

For a comparison of storage features and prices from all providers, please check the Cloud Storage page.

Storage Type Price / GB / month Restriction Description
Block $0.100 https://aws.amazon.com/lightsail/faq/#Billing_and_account_management
Snapshots $0.050 https://aws.amazon.com/lightsail/faq/#Billing_and_account_management

Compare all Amazon Lightsail plans in the Screener

The Screener shows all Amazon Lightsail plans side by side with their grades in 5 categories.

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Amazon Lightsail Plans


Plan Specifications

URL https://aws.amazon.com/lightsail/pricing/
Price per month $5.00
Discount for long 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 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: 16

Web Performance Raw CPU Power Performance Stability Disk IO Performance Network Performance
F F F E D
Show Price Weighted Grades   

Performance Test Results

We conducted 5 different types of tests for Amazon Lightsail - 1GB 1core. Review the results and compare this plan to its competitors.

Web Test Sysbench Test Remote Timing Test Endurance Test Network Transfers
Review Review Review Review Review
Compare Compare Compare Compare Compare

Performance trials run on the 1GB 1core plan

This plan was tested 6 times at vpsbenchmarks.com. The table below shows all trials run on the 1GB 1core plan and the web response times for every one of those.

Start of Trial Web Results Sysbench Results Avg web response time P99 web response time
Mar 22 2019 Web Sysbench 140ms 1463ms
Sep 06 2018 Web Sysbench 58ms 273ms
Apr 19 2018 Web Sysbench 59ms 260ms
Jul 30 2017 Web Sysbench 66ms 342ms
Jul 23 2017 Web Sysbench 59ms 291ms
Dec 03 2016 Web Sysbench 156ms 1540ms

Plan Specifications

URL https://aws.amazon.com/lightsail/pricing/
Price per month $10.00
Discount for long 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 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: 44

Web Performance Raw CPU Power Performance Stability Disk IO Performance Network Performance
B E D D C
Show Price Weighted Grades   

Performance Test Results

We conducted 5 different types of tests for Amazon Lightsail - 2GB 1core. Review the results and compare this plan to its competitors.

Web Test Sysbench Test Remote Timing Test Endurance Test Network Transfers
Review Review Review Review Review
Compare Compare Compare Compare Compare

Performance trials run on the 2GB 1core plan

This plan was tested 4 times at vpsbenchmarks.com. The table below shows all trials run on the 2GB 1core plan and the web response times for every one of those.

Start of Trial Web Results Sysbench Results Avg web response time P99 web response time
Jan 20 2019 Web Sysbench 61ms 275ms
Jun 28 2018 Web Sysbench 52ms 246ms
Oct 21 2017 Web Sysbench 53ms 260ms
Jan 29 2017 Web Sysbench 48ms 222ms

Plan Specifications

URL https://aws.amazon.com/lightsail/pricing/
Price per month $20.00
Discount for long 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: 35%
Dedicated 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: 50

Web Performance Raw CPU Power Performance Stability Disk IO Performance Network Performance
C D D D C
Show Price Weighted Grades   

Performance Test Results

We conducted 5 different types of tests for Amazon Lightsail - 4GB 2cores. Review the results and compare this plan to its competitors.

Web Test Sysbench Test Remote Timing Test Endurance Test Network Transfers
Review Review Review Review Review
Compare Compare Compare Compare Compare

Performance trials run on the 4GB 2cores plan

This plan was tested 2 times at vpsbenchmarks.com. The table below shows all trials run on the 4GB 2cores plan and the web response times for every one of those.

Start of Trial Web Results Sysbench Results Avg web response time P99 web response time
Nov 05 2018 Web Sysbench 54ms 290ms
Jun 07 2018 Web Sysbench 46ms 233ms

Plan Specifications

URL https://aws.amazon.com/lightsail/pricing/
Price per month $40.00
Discount for long 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 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: 61

Web Performance Raw CPU Power Performance Stability Disk IO Performance Network Performance
B C C D C
Show Price Weighted Grades   

Performance Test Results

We conducted 5 different types of tests for Amazon Lightsail - 8GB 2cores. Review the results and compare this plan to its competitors.

Web Test Sysbench Test Remote Timing Test Endurance Test Network Transfers
Review Review Review Review Review
Compare Compare Compare Compare Compare

Performance trials run on the 8GB 2cores plan

This plan was tested 1 times at vpsbenchmarks.com. The table below shows all trials run on the 8GB 2cores plan and the web response times for every one of those.

Start of Trial Web Results Sysbench Results Avg web response time P99 web response time
May 19 2019 Web Sysbench 60ms 260ms

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