r7a.large

Analysis

The r7a.large is a memory optimized instance in the r7a series with 2 vCPUs and 16 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.large on AWS Graviton3 costs $0.1071/hour, 30% less ($32.89 a month), though switching means rebuilding software for arm64. The other variants are the r7i.large at $0.1323, the r7gd.large at $0.1361 and the r7iz.large at $0.1860.

Compared with the previous generation, it costs 34% more than the r6a.large on AMD EPYC 7R13 ($28.29 more a month per instance), in exchange for the newer processor. The newer r8a.large on AMD EPYC 9R45 is 5.0% dearer at $0.1598/hour.

Running it in N. Virginia instead of Frankfurt saves $22.91 a month per instance: $0.1522/hour against $0.1835/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 $0.1522/hour in US East (N. Virginia), $111 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).