c4.4xlarge

Analysis

The c4.4xlarge is a compute optimized instance in the c4 series with 16 vCPUs and 30 GiB of memory on Intel Xeon E5-2666 v3 (Haswell) (up to 2.9 GHz), which makes it compute-heavy at 1.88 GiB of memory per vCPU.

The newer c5.4xlarge on Intel Xeon Platinum 8124M is 15% cheaper at $0.6800/hour, which makes the c4.4xlarge hard to justify for new deployments.

It is size 4 of 5 in the c4 series. Stepping up to the c4.8xlarge gives 36 vCPUs and 60 GiB for $580 more a month. Dropping to the c4.2xlarge saves $291 a month. Unit price is not flat across the series ($0.0442 to $0.0500 per vCPU-hour), so the size changes the rate you pay.

Running it in N. Virginia instead of São Paulo saves $320 a month per instance: $0.7960/hour against $1.24/hour, a 55% spread.

Reserving it for a year with no upfront payment cuts the Linux rate to $0.5040/hour, which beats on demand once it runs more than 63% of the time; three years brings it to $0.3540/hour, 56% below on demand. Windows Server roughly doubles the bill at $1.53/hour, because the licence is charged per vCPU.

On demand it costs $0.7960/hour in US East (N. Virginia), $581 a month if left running, which puts it mid-table for compute optimized types at the 55th percentile per vCPU ($0.0498 per vCPU-hour) and the 66th percentile per GiB ($0.0265 per GiB-hour).