Instance Types and Pricing Models
Compare On-Demand, Reserved, Spot, and Savings Plans pricing and match each to the right workload pattern.
EC2 Instance Type Families
EC2 instance types are organised into families that optimise for specific workloads. General Purpose (M, T): balanced CPU, memory, network—web servers, small databases. Compute Optimised (C): high CPU ratio—batch processing, media transcoding, ML inference. Memory Optimised (R, X, U): high RAM ratio—in-memory databases, real-time big data analytics. Storage Optimised (I, D, H): high I/O for local NVMe SSDs—databases with heavy random I/O. Accelerated Computing (P, G, Inf, Trn): GPUs/custom silicon for ML training and HPC.
Burstable T-Series Instances
The T-series (t3, t3a, t4g) instances are burstable—they earn CPU credits when running below their baseline CPU utilisation and spend credits to burst above the baseline. A t3.micro has a 10% CPU baseline; it can burst to 100% CPU if credits are available. T Unlimited mode (the default) allows bursting beyond the credit balance for a small additional charge. T instances are cost-efficient for workloads with low average but spiky CPU—dev environments, small websites, build servers.
# Check CPU credit balance for a T instance
aws cloudwatch get-metric-statistics \
--namespace AWS/EC2 \
--metric-name CPUCreditBalance \
--dimensions Name=InstanceId,Value=i-0abcdef1234567890 \
--start-time 2024-01-01T00:00:00Z --end-time 2024-01-02T00:00:00Z \
--period 3600 --statistics AverageAll lessons in this course
- Launching Your First EC2 Instance
- Instance Types and Pricing Models
- Security Groups and Key Pairs
- EC2 Storage: Instance Store vs EBS