c8a.8xlarge

Analysis

The c8a.8xlarge is a compute optimized instance in the c8a series with 32 vCPUs and 64 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.8xlarge on AWS Graviton4 costs $1.28/hour, 26% less ($327 a month), though switching means rebuilding software for arm64. The other variants are the c8i-flex.8xlarge at $1.42, the c8i.8xlarge at $1.50 and the c8gd.8xlarge at $1.57.

Running it in N. Virginia instead of Tokyo saves $326 a month per instance: $1.72/hour against $2.17/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 $1.72/hour in US East (N. Virginia), $1,259 a month if left running, which puts it mid-table for compute optimized types at the 69th percentile per vCPU ($0.0539 per vCPU-hour) and the 73rd percentile per GiB ($0.0269 per GiB-hour).

Looking beyond its own line, 19 of 28 current types with 32 vCPUs and similar memory are cheaper. The cheapest of those is the c6g.8xlarge on AWS Graviton2 at $1.09/hour.

Compared with the previous generation, it costs 5.0% more than the c7a.8xlarge on AMD EPYC 9R14 ($59.92 more a month per instance), in exchange for the newer processor.