r7a.xlarge

Analysis

The r7a.xlarge is a memory optimized instance in the r7a series with 4 vCPUs and 32 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.xlarge on AWS Graviton3 costs $0.2142/hour, 30% less ($65.77 a month), though switching means rebuilding software for arm64. The other variants are the r7i.xlarge at $0.2646, the r7gd.xlarge at $0.2722 and the r7iz.xlarge at $0.3720.

Compared with the previous generation, it costs 34% more than the r6a.xlarge on AMD EPYC 7R13 ($56.58 more a month per instance), in exchange for the newer processor. The newer r8a.xlarge on AMD EPYC 9R45 is 5.0% dearer at $0.3195/hour.

Running it in N. Virginia instead of Frankfurt saves $45.83 a month per instance: $0.3043/hour against $0.3671/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 $0.3043/hour in US East (N. Virginia), $222 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).