x8g.16xlarge

Analysis

The x8g.16xlarge is a memory optimized instance in the x8g series with 64 vCPUs and 1024 GiB of memory on AWS Graviton4 (up to 2.7 GHz), which makes it very memory-heavy at 16 GiB of memory per vCPU.

Running it in N. Virginia instead of Frankfurt saves $1,815 a month per instance: $6.25/hour against $8.74/hour, a 40% spread. It is not offered in Canada Central, São Paulo, London, Mumbai, Singapore and Tokyo, so plan around that if you need a presence there.

It is the cheapest of the 2 processor variants AWS sells at this size and generation. The x8i.16xlarge on Intel Xeon Scalable (Granite Rapids) costs 12% more, and no others also sit above it.

On demand it costs $6.25/hour in US East (N. Virginia), $4,565 a month if left running, which puts it mid-table for memory optimized types at the 74th percentile per vCPU ($0.0977 per vCPU-hour) and the 3rd percentile per GiB ($0.00611 per GiB-hour).

Looking beyond its own line, 2 of 7 current types with 64 vCPUs and similar memory are cheaper. The cheapest of those is the x2gd.16xlarge on AWS Graviton2 at $5.34/hour.

Reserving it for a year with no upfront payment cuts the Linux rate to $3.85/hour, which beats on demand once it runs more than 62% of the time; three years brings it to $2.14/hour, 66% below on demand.