z1d.xlarge

Analysis

The z1d.xlarge is a memory optimized instance in the z1d series with 4 vCPUs and 32 GiB of memory on Intel Xeon Platinum 8151 (up to 4 GHz), which makes it memory-heavy at 8 GiB of memory per vCPU.

Running it in N. Virginia instead of Tokyo saves $59.86 a month per instance: $0.3720/hour against $0.4540/hour, a 22% spread. It is not offered in Canada Central and São Paulo, so plan around that if you need a presence there.

On demand it costs $0.3720/hour in US East (N. Virginia), $272 a month if left running, which puts it mid-table for memory optimized types at the 68th percentile per vCPU ($0.0930 per vCPU-hour) and the 84th percentile per GiB ($0.0116 per GiB-hour).

Looking beyond its own line, 32 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.

It has local instance storage (1 x 150 GB NVMe SSD), which is fast but lost when the instance stops. Network: Up to 10 Gigabit.

Reserving it for a year with no upfront payment cuts the Linux rate to $0.2340/hour, which beats on demand once it runs more than 63% of the time; three years brings it to $0.1530/hour, 59% below on demand. Windows Server roughly adds 49% to the bill at $0.5560/hour, because the licence is charged per vCPU.