m6a.32xlarge

Analysis

The m6a.32xlarge is a general purpose instance in the m6a series with 128 vCPUs and 512 GiB of memory on AMD EPYC 7R13 (up to 3.6 GHz), which makes it balanced at 4 GiB of memory per vCPU.

The newer m7a.32xlarge on AMD EPYC 9R14 is 34% dearer at $7.42/hour.

Running it in Mumbai instead of São Paulo saves $3,838 a month per instance: $3.56/hour against $8.81/hour, a 148% spread.

Nothing else with 128 vCPUs and similar memory is cheaper: among 12 current same-shape types it has the lowest on-demand price.

It is the cheapest of the 5 processor variants AWS sells at this size and generation. The m6idn.32xlarge on Intel Xeon 8375C (Ice Lake) costs 84% more, and the m6i.32xlarge, the m6id.32xlarge and the m6in.32xlarge also sit above it.

At $5.53/hour on demand in US East (N. Virginia), about $4,037 a month, the m6a.32xlarge is one of the cheaper ways to buy general purpose capacity: only 17% of the 354 current general purpose types cost less per vCPU-hour than its $0.0432.

Reserving it for a year with no upfront payment cuts the Linux rate to $3.66/hour, which beats on demand once it runs more than 66% of the time; three years brings it to $2.51/hour, 55% below on demand. Windows Server roughly doubles the bill at $11.42/hour, because the licence is charged per vCPU.