c6in.16xlarge

Analysis

The c6in.16xlarge is a compute optimized instance in the c6in series with 64 vCPUs and 128 GiB of memory on Intel Xeon 8375C (Ice Lake) (up to 3.5 GHz), which makes it compute-heavy at 2 GiB of memory per vCPU.

Within the same generation and size, the c6g.16xlarge on AWS Graviton2 costs $2.18/hour, 40% less ($1,061 a month), though switching means rebuilding software for arm64. The other variants are the c6a.16xlarge at $2.45, the c6gd.16xlarge at $2.46 and the c6i.16xlarge at $2.72.

Per vCPU it is one of the dearer compute optimized types: 78% of the 291 current types in the family cost less than its $0.0567 per vCPU-hour. The premium mostly pays for the very fast networking. On demand it is $3.63/hour in US East (N. Virginia), or $2,649 for a 730-hour month.

Running it in Mumbai instead of São Paulo saves $1,423 a month per instance: $3.63/hour against $5.58/hour, a 54% spread.

Looking beyond its own line, 22 of 28 current types with 64 vCPUs and similar memory are cheaper. The cheapest of those is the hpc7g.16xlarge on AWS Graviton3 at $1.68/hour.

Reserving it for a year with no upfront payment cuts the Linux rate to $2.29/hour, which beats on demand once it runs more than 63% of the time; three years brings it to $1.32/hour, 64% below on demand. Windows Server roughly adds 81% to the bill at $6.57/hour, because the licence is charged per vCPU.