m8id.large

Analysis

The m8id.large is a general purpose instance in the m8id 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, 31% less ($29.75 a month), though switching means rebuilding software for arm64. The other variants are the m8i-flex.large at $0.1006, the m8i.large at $0.1058 and the m8gd.large at $0.1153.

Running it in N. Virginia instead of Tokyo saves $27.82 a month per instance: $0.1305/hour against $0.1686/hour, a 29% spread. It is not offered in São Paulo and Singapore, so plan around that if you need a presence there.

On demand it costs $0.1305/hour in US East (N. Virginia), $95.28 a month if left running, which puts it mid-table for general purpose types at the 68th percentile per vCPU ($0.0653 per vCPU-hour) and the 68th percentile per GiB ($0.0163 per GiB-hour).

Looking beyond its own line, 27 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.