c8a.12xlarge

Analysis

The c8a.12xlarge is a compute optimized instance in the c8a series with 48 vCPUs and 96 GiB of memory on AMD EPYC 9R45 (up to Up to 4.5 GHz), which makes it compute-heavy at 2 GiB of memory per vCPU.

Within the same generation and size, the c8g.12xlarge on AWS Graviton4 costs $1.91/hour, 26% less ($491 a month), though switching means rebuilding software for arm64. The other variants are the c8i-flex.12xlarge at $2.14, the c8i.12xlarge at $2.25 and the c8gd.12xlarge at $2.35.

Running it in N. Virginia instead of Tokyo saves $489 a month per instance: $2.59/hour against $3.26/hour, a 26% spread. It is not offered in Canada Central, São Paulo, London, Mumbai, Singapore and Sydney, so plan around that if you need a presence there.

On demand it costs $2.59/hour in US East (N. Virginia), $1,888 a month if left running, which puts it mid-table for compute optimized types at the 67th percentile per vCPU ($0.0539 per vCPU-hour) and the 71st percentile per GiB ($0.0269 per GiB-hour).

Looking beyond its own line, 21 of 30 current types with 48 vCPUs and similar memory are cheaper. The cheapest of those is the c6g.12xlarge on AWS Graviton2 at $1.63/hour.

Compared with the previous generation, it costs 5.0% more than the c7a.12xlarge on AMD EPYC 9R14 ($89.88 more a month per instance), in exchange for the newer processor.