r7a.16xlarge

Analysis

The r7a.16xlarge is a memory optimized instance in the r7a series with 64 vCPUs and 512 GiB of memory on AMD EPYC 9R14 (up to Up to 3.7 GHz), which makes it memory-heavy at 8 GiB of memory per vCPU.

Within the same generation and size, the r7g.16xlarge on AWS Graviton3 costs $3.43/hour, 30% less ($1,052 a month), though switching means rebuilding software for arm64. The other variants are the r7i.16xlarge at $4.23, the r7gd.16xlarge at $4.35 and the r7iz.16xlarge at $5.95.

Compared with the previous generation, it costs 34% more than the r6a.16xlarge on AMD EPYC 7R13 ($905 more a month per instance), in exchange for the newer processor. The newer r8a.16xlarge on AMD EPYC 9R45 is 5.0% dearer at $5.11/hour.

Running it in N. Virginia instead of Frankfurt saves $733 a month per instance: $4.87/hour against $5.87/hour, a 21% spread. It is not offered in Canada Central, São Paulo, London, Mumbai, Singapore and Sydney, so plan around that if you need a presence there.

On demand it costs $4.87/hour in US East (N. Virginia), $3,554 a month if left running, which puts it mid-table for memory optimized types at the 46th percentile per vCPU ($0.0761 per vCPU-hour) and the 62nd percentile per GiB ($0.00951 per GiB-hour).