AWS EC2 pricing

On-demand instances across every region and instance family. List rates are the highest in this category on both compute and egress; reserved instances and savings plans are how the price actually comes down.

List prices checked

By Amazon Web Services · Cloud compute & VPS

Rate card

What Amazon Web Services charges, by billing axis.

AxisPriceApplies to
Compute$0.042/vCPU-hrOn-demand, cheapest general-purpose region
Data transfer out$0.090/GBStandard tier, cheapest common region
Free tierYes750 hours per month of a t-class micro instance for 12 months

Source: Amazon Web Services pricing (May 2026). Published list prices only — committed-use discounts, regional variation, and per-request charges are not included. Not yet independently re-checked against the vendor’s page.

What it costs per month

AWS EC2 billed against three workload profiles, using the rates above. Every line shows its arithmetic.

Side project

A personal site or small app with modest traffic, a few gigabytes of assets, and one small always-on process.

$39/mo

  • 730 vCPU-hours at $0.0416/hour$30
  • 100 GB at $0.09/GB$9.00

Growing SaaS

A funded product serving a few thousand daily users, with an image-heavy frontend and two application servers.

$151/mo

  • 1,460 vCPU-hours at $0.0416/hour$61
  • 1 TB at $0.09/GB$90

Media-heavy site

A publisher or video product where delivery dominates the bill and compute is almost an afterthought.

$930/mo

  • 730 vCPU-hours at $0.0416/hour$30
  • 10 TB at $0.09/GB$900

AWS EC2 vs the alternatives

The closest compute providers on price, with the difference on cloud compute & vps's headline axis.

ServicePer vCPU-hrvs AWS EC2Compare
Google Compute Engine$0.0481.1× dearerHead to head
Azure Virtual Machines$0.0521.3× dearerHead to head
Oracle Cloud Compute$0.0104.2× cheaperHead to head
Linode (Akamai Cloud)$0.00755.5× cheaperHead to head
UpCloud$0.00745.6× cheaperHead to head
Scaleway Instances$0.00606.9× cheaperHead to head

Questions about pricing

How much does AWS EC2 cost in 2026?
AWS EC2 charges usage-based rates with no fixed monthly floor, per Amazon Web Services's published pricing page. There is also a free tier: 750 hours per month of a t-class micro instance for 12 months. The tables above break the rate card down by axis and model it against three concrete workloads.
Does AWS EC2 have a free tier?
Yes — 750 hours per month of a t-class micro instance for 12 months. Check whether it is permanent or a trial before you build a budget around it; the two are often presented identically.
What does AWS EC2 charge for egress?
$0.090 per GB. Egress is where providers in this category differ most, so it is worth checking against the alternatives before committing.
Are these AWS EC2 prices current?
They were checked against Amazon Web Services's official pricing page and stamped with that date, which is shown at the top of this page and next to every table. Vendors change list prices without notice — the source link is there so you can confirm before you commit.

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