r8a.xlarge

Analysis

The r8a.xlarge is a memory optimized instance in the r8a series with 4 vCPUs and 32 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.xlarge on AWS Graviton4 costs $0.2356/hour, 26% less ($61.23 a month), though switching means rebuilding software for arm64. The other variants are the r8i-flex.xlarge at $0.2639, the r8i.xlarge at $0.2778 and the r8gd.xlarge at $0.2939.

Running it in N. Virginia instead of Frankfurt saves $48.12 a month per instance: $0.3195/hour against $0.3854/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.

Looking beyond its own line, 23 of 45 current types with 4 vCPUs and similar memory are cheaper. The cheapest of those is the r6g.xlarge on AWS Graviton2 at $0.2016/hour.

On demand it costs $0.3195/hour in US East (N. Virginia), $233 a month if left running, which puts it mid-table for memory optimized types at the 49th percentile per vCPU ($0.0799 per vCPU-hour) and the 65th percentile per GiB ($0.00999 per GiB-hour).

Compared with the previous generation, it costs 5.0% more than the r7a.xlarge on AMD EPYC 9R14 ($11.11 more a month per instance), in exchange for the newer processor.