m8in.xlarge

Analysis

The m8in.xlarge is a general purpose instance in the m8in series with 4 vCPUs and 16 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.xlarge on AWS Graviton4 costs $0.1795/hour, 46% less ($113 a month), though switching means rebuilding software for arm64. The other variants are the m8i-flex.xlarge at $0.2011, the m8i.xlarge at $0.2117 and the m8gd.xlarge at $0.2306.

Running it in N. Virginia instead of Tokyo saves $69.69 a month per instance: $0.3342/hour against $0.4296/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 $0.3342/hour in US East (N. Virginia), or $244 for a 730-hour month.

Looking beyond its own line, 34 of 42 current types with 4 vCPUs and similar memory are cheaper. The cheapest of those is the t4g.xlarge on AWS Graviton2 at $0.1344/hour. It is burstable, so it only suits workloads that do not run the CPU flat out.