m8gb.12xlarge

Analysis

The m8gb.12xlarge is a general purpose instance in the m8gb series with 48 vCPUs and 192 GiB of memory on AWS Graviton4 (up to 2.8 GHz), which makes it balanced at 4 GiB of memory per vCPU.

Within the same generation and size, the m8g.12xlarge on AWS Graviton4 costs $2.15/hour, 38% less ($977 a month). The other variants are the m8i-flex.12xlarge at $2.41, the m8i.12xlarge at $2.54 and the m8gd.12xlarge at $2.77.

Running it in N. Virginia instead of Ireland saves $300 a month per instance: $3.49/hour against $3.90/hour, a 12% spread. It is not offered in Ohio, Canada Central, São Paulo, 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 general purpose types: 77% of the 354 current types in the family cost less than its $0.0727 per vCPU-hour. The premium mostly pays for the very fast networking. On demand it is $3.49/hour in US East (N. Virginia), or $2,549 for a 730-hour month.

Looking beyond its own line, 25 of 36 current types with 48 vCPUs and similar memory are cheaper. The cheapest of those is the m6g.12xlarge on AWS Graviton2 at $1.85/hour.