c5ad.12xlarge

Analysis

The c5ad.12xlarge is a compute optimized instance in the c5ad series with 48 vCPUs and 96 GiB of memory on AMD EPYC 7R32 (up to 3.3 GHz), which makes it compute-heavy at 2 GiB of memory per vCPU.

Running it in N. Virginia instead of São Paulo saves $841 a month per instance: $2.06/hour against $3.22/hour, a 56% spread. It is not offered in Canada Central, London, Mumbai and Tokyo, so plan around that if you need a presence there.

Within the same generation and size, the c5a.12xlarge on AMD EPYC 7R32 costs $1.85/hour, 10% less ($158 a month). The other variants are the c5.12xlarge at $2.04 and the c5d.12xlarge at $2.30.

On demand it costs $2.06/hour in US East (N. Virginia), $1,507 a month if left running, which puts it mid-table for compute optimized types at the 30th percentile per vCPU ($0.0430 per vCPU-hour) and the 34th percentile per GiB ($0.0215 per GiB-hour).

Reserving it for a year with no upfront payment cuts the Linux rate to $1.30/hour, which beats on demand once it runs more than 63% of the time; three years brings it to $0.8920/hour, 57% below on demand. Windows Server roughly doubles the bill at $4.27/hour, because the licence is charged per vCPU.