c5n.large

Analysis

The c5n.large is a compute optimized instance in the c5n series with 2 vCPUs and 5.25 GiB of memory on Intel Xeon Platinum 8124M (up to 3 GHz), which makes it balanced at 2.62 GiB of memory per vCPU.

Within the same generation and size, the c5a.large on AMD EPYC 7R32 costs $0.0770/hour, 29% less ($22.63 a month). The other variants are the c5.large at $0.0850, the c5ad.large at $0.0860 and the c5d.large at $0.0960.

Running it in Mumbai instead of São Paulo saves $42.34 a month per instance: $0.1080/hour against $0.1660/hour, a 54% spread.

On demand it costs $0.1080/hour in US East (N. Virginia), $78.84 a month if left running, which puts it mid-table for compute optimized types at the 71st percentile per vCPU ($0.0540 per vCPU-hour) and the 22nd percentile per GiB ($0.0206 per GiB-hour).

Looking beyond its own line, 27 of 36 current types with 2 vCPUs and similar memory are cheaper. The cheapest of those is the t4g.medium on AWS Graviton2 at $0.0336/hour. It is burstable, so it only suits workloads that do not run the CPU flat out.

Reserving it for a year with no upfront payment cuts the Linux rate to $0.0680/hour, which beats on demand once it runs more than 63% of the time; three years brings it to $0.0390/hour, 64% below on demand. Windows Server roughly adds 85% to the bill at $0.2000/hour, because the licence is charged per vCPU.