c8ib.xlarge

Analysis

The c8ib.xlarge is a compute optimized instance in the c8ib series with 4 vCPUs and 8 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.xlarge on AWS Graviton4 costs $0.1595/hour, 41% less ($82.23 a month), though switching means rebuilding software for arm64. The other variants are the c8i-flex.xlarge at $0.1780, the c8i.xlarge at $0.1874 and the c8gd.xlarge at $0.1960.

Its price is almost flat across the 2 regions that offer it ($0.2722 to $0.2722/hour), so latency and data residency should decide where it runs. It is not offered in Ohio, Canada Central, São Paulo, Ireland, London, Frankfurt, Mumbai, Singapore, Sydney and Tokyo, so plan around that if you need a presence there.

Per vCPU it is one of the dearer compute optimized types: 92% of the 291 current types in the family cost less than its $0.0680 per vCPU-hour. The premium mostly pays for a newer processor or a specialised configuration. On demand it is $0.2722/hour in US East (N. Virginia), or $199 for a 730-hour month.

Looking beyond its own line, 28 of 31 current types with 4 vCPUs and similar memory are cheaper. The cheapest of those is the c6g.xlarge on AWS Graviton2 at $0.1360/hour.