m8i.large

Analysis

The m8i.large is a general purpose instance in the m8i series with 2 vCPUs and 8 GiB of memory on Intel Xeon Scalable (Granite Rapids) (up to 3.9 GHz), which makes it balanced at 4 GiB of memory per vCPU.

Within the same generation and size, the m8g.large on AWS Graviton4 costs $0.0898/hour, 15% less ($11.74 a month), though switching means rebuilding software for arm64. The other variants are the m8i-flex.large at $0.1006, the m8gd.large at $0.1153 and the m8a.large at $0.1217.

Running it in N. Virginia instead of São Paulo saves $45.87 a month per instance: $0.1058/hour against $0.1687/hour, a 59% spread.

On demand it costs $0.1058/hour in US East (N. Virginia), $77.26 a month if left running, which puts it mid-table for general purpose types at the 44th percentile per vCPU ($0.0529 per vCPU-hour) and the 44th percentile per GiB ($0.0132 per GiB-hour).

Compared with the previous generation, it costs 5.0% more than the m7i.large on Intel Xeon Scalable (Sapphire Rapids) ($3.68 more a month per instance), in exchange for the newer processor.

Looking beyond its own line, 18 of 41 current types with 2 vCPUs and similar memory are cheaper. The cheapest of those is the t4g.large on AWS Graviton2 at $0.0672/hour. It is burstable, so it only suits workloads that do not run the CPU flat out.