c6in.xlarge

Analysis

The c6in.xlarge is a compute optimized instance in the c6in series with 4 vCPUs and 8 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.xlarge on AWS Graviton2 costs $0.1360/hour, 40% less ($66.28 a month), though switching means rebuilding software for arm64. The other variants are the c6a.xlarge at $0.1530, the c6gd.xlarge at $0.1536 and the c6i.xlarge at $0.1700.

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 a newer processor or a specialised configuration. On demand it is $0.2268/hour in US East (N. Virginia), or $166 for a 730-hour month.

Running it in Mumbai instead of São Paulo saves $88.91 a month per instance: $0.2268/hour against $0.3486/hour, a 54% spread.

Looking beyond its own line, 24 of 31 current types with 4 vCPUs and similar memory are cheaper. The cheapest of those is the c7g.xlarge on AWS Graviton3 at $0.1450/hour.

Reserving it for a year with no upfront payment cuts the Linux rate to $0.1429/hour, which beats on demand once it runs more than 63% of the time; three years brings it to $0.0824/hour, 64% below on demand. Windows Server roughly adds 81% to the bill at $0.4108/hour, because the licence is charged per vCPU.