m8ib.8xlarge

Analysis

The m8ib.8xlarge is a general purpose instance in the m8ib series with 32 vCPUs and 128 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.8xlarge on AWS Graviton4 costs $1.44/hour, 46% less ($903 a month), though switching means rebuilding software for arm64. The other variants are the m8i-flex.8xlarge at $1.61, the m8i.8xlarge at $1.69 and the m8gd.8xlarge at $1.85.

Running it in N. Virginia instead of Tokyo saves $557 a month per instance: $2.67/hour against $3.44/hour, a 29% spread. It is not offered in Canada Central, São Paulo, London, Frankfurt, Mumbai, Singapore and Sydney, so plan around that if you need a presence there.

Per vCPU it is one of the dearer general purpose types: 87% of the 354 current types in the family cost less than its $0.0835 per vCPU-hour. The premium mostly pays for a newer processor or a specialised configuration. On demand it is $2.67/hour in US East (N. Virginia), or $1,951 for a 730-hour month.

Looking beyond its own line, 30 of 37 current types with 32 vCPUs and similar memory are cheaper. The cheapest of those is the m6g.8xlarge on AWS Graviton2 at $1.23/hour.