c8a.large

Analysis

The c8a.large is a compute optimized instance in the c8a series with 2 vCPUs and 4 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.large on AWS Graviton4 costs $0.0798/hour, 26% less ($20.45 a month), though switching means rebuilding software for arm64. The other variants are the c8i-flex.large at $0.0890, the c8i.large at $0.0937 and the c8gd.large at $0.0980.

Running it in N. Virginia instead of Tokyo saves $20.36 a month per instance: $0.1078/hour against $0.1357/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 $0.1078/hour in US East (N. Virginia), $78.67 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, 27 of 36 current types with 2 vCPUs and similar memory are cheaper. The cheapest of those is the t4g.medium on AWS Graviton2 at $0.0336/hour. It is burstable, so it only suits workloads that do not run the CPU flat out.