c6a.24xlarge

Analysis

The c6a.24xlarge is a compute optimized instance in the c6a series with 96 vCPUs and 192 GiB of memory on AMD EPYC 7R13 (up to 3.6 GHz), which makes it compute-heavy at 2 GiB of memory per vCPU.

It is 0.6% cheaper than the older c5a.24xlarge on AMD EPYC 7R32, so staying on the previous generation costs more as well as being slower. The newer c7a.24xlarge on AMD EPYC 9R14 is 34% dearer at $4.93/hour.

Running it in Mumbai instead of São Paulo saves $2,493 a month per instance: $2.24/hour against $5.66/hour, a 152% spread.

Nothing else with 96 vCPUs and similar memory is cheaper: among 22 current same-shape types it has the lowest on-demand price.

At $3.67/hour on demand in US East (N. Virginia), about $2,681 a month, the c6a.24xlarge is one of the cheaper ways to buy compute optimized capacity: only 8% of the 291 current compute optimized types cost less per vCPU-hour than its $0.0382.

It is the cheapest of the 4 processor variants AWS sells at this size and generation. The c6in.24xlarge on Intel Xeon 8375C (Ice Lake) costs 48% more, and the c6i.24xlarge and the c6id.24xlarge also sit above it.

Reserving it for a year with no upfront payment cuts the Linux rate to $2.43/hour, which beats on demand once it runs more than 66% of the time; three years brings it to $1.62/hour, 56% below on demand. Windows Server roughly doubles the bill at $8.09/hour, because the licence is charged per vCPU.