c8i-flex.12xlarge

Analysis

The c8i-flex.12xlarge is a compute optimized instance in the c8i-flex series with 48 vCPUs and 96 GiB of memory on Intel Xeon Scalable (Granite Rapids) (up to 3.9 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, 10% less ($162 a month), though switching means rebuilding software for arm64. The other variants are the c8i.12xlarge at $2.25, the c8gd.12xlarge at $2.35 and the c8a.12xlarge at $2.59.

Running it in Mumbai instead of São Paulo saves $844 a month per instance: $2.14/hour against $3.29/hour, a 54% spread.

On demand it costs $2.14/hour in US East (N. Virginia), $1,560 a month if left running, which puts it mid-table for compute optimized types at the 38th percentile per vCPU ($0.0445 per vCPU-hour) and the 41st percentile per GiB ($0.0223 per GiB-hour).

Windows Server roughly doubles the bill at $4.23/hour, because the licence is charged per vCPU.

Compared with the previous generation, it costs 5.0% more than the c7i-flex.12xlarge on Intel Xeon Scalable (Sapphire Rapids) ($74.15 more a month per instance), in exchange for the newer processor.

Looking beyond its own line, 12 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.