r8a.48xlarge

Analysis

The r8a.48xlarge is a memory optimized instance in the r8a series with 192 vCPUs and 1536 GiB of memory on AMD EPYC 9R45 (up to Up to 4.5 GHz), which makes it memory-heavy at 8 GiB of memory per vCPU.

Within the same generation and size, the r8g.48xlarge on AWS Graviton4 costs $11.31/hour, 26% less ($2,939 a month), though switching means rebuilding software for arm64. The other variants are the r8i.48xlarge at $13.34, the r8gd.48xlarge at $14.11 and the r8id.48xlarge at $15.97.

Running it in N. Virginia instead of Frankfurt saves $2,310 a month per instance: $15.34/hour against $18.50/hour, a 21% spread. It is not offered in São Paulo, London, Mumbai, Singapore and Sydney, so plan around that if you need a presence there.

On demand it costs $15.34/hour in US East (N. Virginia), $11,196 a month if left running, which puts it mid-table for memory optimized types at the 48th percentile per vCPU ($0.0799 per vCPU-hour) and the 64th percentile per GiB ($0.00999 per GiB-hour).

Compared with the previous generation, it costs 5.0% more than the r7a.48xlarge on AMD EPYC 9R14 ($533 more a month per instance), in exchange for the newer processor.

Looking beyond its own line, 7 of 20 current types with 192 vCPUs and similar memory are cheaper. The cheapest of those is the r6a.48xlarge on AMD EPYC 7R13 at $10.89/hour.