r8id.8xlarge

Analysis

The r8id.8xlarge is a memory optimized instance in the r8id series with 32 vCPUs and 256 GiB of memory on Intel Xeon Scalable (Granite Rapids) (up to 3.9 GHz), which makes it memory-heavy at 8 GiB of memory per vCPU.

Within the same generation and size, the r8g.8xlarge on AWS Graviton4 costs $1.89/hour, 29% less ($566 a month), though switching means rebuilding software for arm64. The other variants are the r8i-flex.8xlarge at $2.11, the r8i.8xlarge at $2.22 and the r8gd.8xlarge at $2.35.

Running it in N. Virginia instead of Tokyo saves $405 a month per instance: $2.66/hour against $3.22/hour, a 21% spread. It is not offered in São Paulo and Singapore, so plan around that if you need a presence there.

Looking beyond its own line, 25 of 41 current types with 32 vCPUs and similar memory are cheaper. The cheapest of those is the r6g.8xlarge on AWS Graviton2 at $1.61/hour.

It has local instance storage (1 x 1900 GB NVMe SSD), which is fast but lost when the instance stops. Network: 15000 Megabit.

On demand it costs $2.66/hour in US East (N. Virginia), $1,943 a month if left running, which puts it mid-table for memory optimized types at the 54th percentile per vCPU ($0.0832 per vCPU-hour) and the 71st percentile per GiB ($0.0104 per GiB-hour).