r5.large

Analysis

The r5.large is a memory optimized instance in the r5 series with 2 vCPUs and 16 GiB of memory on Intel Xeon Platinum 8175 (up to 3.1 GHz), which makes it memory-heavy at 8 GiB of memory per vCPU.

Within the same generation and size, the r5a.large on AMD EPYC 7571 costs $0.1130/hour, 10% less ($9.49 a month). The other variants are the r5ad.large at $0.1310, the r5d.large at $0.1440 and the r5b.large at $0.1490.

At $0.1260/hour on demand in US East (N. Virginia), about $91.98 a month, the r5.large is one of the cheaper ways to buy memory optimized capacity: only 16% of the 385 current memory optimized types cost less per vCPU-hour than its $0.0630.

Running it in N. Virginia instead of São Paulo saves $54.75 a month per instance: $0.1260/hour against $0.2010/hour, a 60% spread.

It is 5.3% cheaper than the older r4.large on Intel Xeon E5-2686 v4 (Broadwell), so staying on the previous generation costs more as well as being slower.

Looking beyond its own line, 6 of 44 current types with 2 vCPUs and similar memory are cheaper. The cheapest of those is the r6g.large on AWS Graviton2 at $0.1008/hour.

Reserving it for a year with no upfront payment cuts the Linux rate to $0.0790/hour, which beats on demand once it runs more than 63% of the time; three years brings it to $0.0540/hour, 57% below on demand. Windows Server roughly adds 73% to the bill at $0.2180/hour, because the licence is charged per vCPU.