r7i.4xlarge

Analysis

The r7i.4xlarge is a memory optimized instance in the r7i series with 16 vCPUs and 128 GiB of memory on Intel Xeon Scalable (Sapphire Rapids) (up to 3.2 GHz), which makes it memory-heavy at 8 GiB of memory per vCPU.

Within the same generation and size, the r7g.4xlarge on AWS Graviton3 costs $0.8568/hour, 19% less ($147 a month), though switching means rebuilding software for arm64. The other variants are the r7gd.4xlarge at $1.09, the r7a.4xlarge at $1.22 and the r7iz.4xlarge at $1.49.

Running it in N. Virginia instead of São Paulo saves $460 a month per instance: $1.06/hour against $1.69/hour, a 60% spread.

On demand it costs $1.06/hour in US East (N. Virginia), $773 a month if left running, which puts it mid-table for memory optimized types at the 26th percentile per vCPU ($0.0662 per vCPU-hour) and the 40th percentile per GiB ($0.00827 per GiB-hour).

Compared with the previous generation, it costs 5.0% more than the r6i.4xlarge on Intel Xeon 8375C (Ice Lake) ($36.79 more a month per instance), in exchange for the newer processor. The newer r8i.4xlarge on Intel Xeon Scalable (Granite Rapids) is 5.0% dearer at $1.11/hour.

Looking beyond its own line, 11 of 42 current types with 16 vCPUs and similar memory are cheaper. The cheapest of those is the r6g.4xlarge on AWS Graviton2 at $0.8064/hour.