9 ms·

On demand pricing starts at roughly $20/month. When they said low cost I was hoping for something in the ~$5 range.

mcrute 8y ago
The a1.medium 12-month reserved cost is $151 which is about $12.60 a month.
TheDong 8y ago
t3.nano instances already start at about ~$4 (+ ebs and network). Their lightsail alternative pricing model for ec2 instances also has $3.50 and $5 instances [0]. [0]: https://aws.amazon.com/lightsail/pricing/ https://aws.amazon.com/lightsail/pricing/
teraflop 8y ago
Spot instances are about $3.50 a month, for what it's worth.
- techdragon 8y ago
  I wonder how long the spot price will remain this low. It does fluctuate after all.
- floatboth 8y ago
  Ooh. Thanks for reminding me about spot. That's way better than the on-demand price. (Still 1/4 the cores of the Scaleway offering though.)
luckylittle 8y ago
Agree, this is still quite expensive.
etaioinshrdlu 8y ago
It seems like a better value than a t2 instance because it's not a burstable core. The network performance is probably much better on this instance type as well.
ksec 8y ago
And it doesn't come with any Storage or Network Transfer. You will soon require a Phd to figure out the cost optimisation on AWS, or simply switch to DO for a much simpler pricing.
- hackbinary 8y ago
  Did Amazon hire the MS licensing folks to work on their subscription prices?
  - degenerate 8y ago
    No because at least they give you the prices! MS would always say you need to 'get a quote'...
    - rcarmo 8y ago
      Azure prices are (notoriously) public, and there is a nice public calculator available at: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/calculator/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/calculator/ (link may redirect to localized versions) I have no idea where you'd get the "get a quote" thing, other than corporate customers usually needing (or wanting) some hand holding and guidance given that a) most of them already have applicable discounts as part of current enterprise agreements and b) accurate quotes require more than guesswork at sizing - we take into account usage patterns, whether or not the customer can benefit from reserved instances (which significantly lower costs 1-to-3y down the road), etc. (I'm a Microsoft FTE working on Azure solutions, and have a personal Azure account which has detailed, per-resource cost breakdowns complete with links to the public pricing pages...)
      - degenerate 8y ago
        I replied to someone making reference to MS licensing pricing (like Exchange CALs and such), not Azure pricing. MS has done great work in the cloud with Azure.
      - eropple 8y ago
nivertech 8y ago
I think the high price is to amortize the Annapurna Labs acquisition and to pay for NRE. Now they will own the entire vertical stack like Apple, but unlike Apple, Amazon can live on minimal margins. BTW, apparently I predicted it in 2011 ;) "Rumors about ARM-based EC2 instances from Amazon this year. Also SSD based EBS. #aws #ec2 #arm #ssd #cloud #amazon 3:14 AM - 27 Feb 2011" https://twitter.com/nivertech/status/41667359487823872 https://twitter.com/nivertech/status/41667359487823872
- simonh 8y ago
  > I think the high price is to amortize the Annapurna Labs acquisition and to pay for NRE. I don't think that's a useful way to think about pricing a product or service. The price has to be driven by the market, not your costs, which means ultimately your costs have to be driven by the market as well or you're done for. I suspect they're pricing this a little high because they don't have a lot of them yet, meanwhile plenty of people will pay a bit extra to get a chance to try this out and do proof-of-concepts on them. As long as the market created by the latter matches the availability due to the former, this will work out fine for Amazon. They can always lower prices as these become more mainstream. Novelty value can be real value.
  - londons_explore 8y ago
    Neither google nor microsoft have ARM CPU's yet, so there is as-yet no price competition.
    - reitzensteinm 8y ago
      Only for situations where ARM is an absolute requirement, which are few and far between.
    - dboreham 8y ago
      Packet.net (bare metal cloud hosting vendor) have ARM instances.
    - floatboth 8y ago
londons_explore 8y ago
I was hoping for something in the $0.10 /month range. An A53 type multicore ARM CPU works out at only $5 or so to buy, and only $3 per year of power to run, so a timeshare on a single core of that machine ought not cost much!
- bdcravens 8y ago
  Are the employees free? As well as memory, motherboard, etc?

The a1.medium 12-month reserved cost is $151 which is about $12.60 a month.

t3.nano instances already start at about ~$4 (+ ebs and network). Their lightsail alternative pricing model for ec2 instances also has $3.50 and $5 instances [0]. [0]: https://aws.amazon.com/lightsail/pricing/ https://aws.amazon.com/lightsail/pricing/

teraflop 8y ago

Spot instances are about $3.50 a month, for what it's worth.

techdragon 8y ago
I wonder how long the spot price will remain this low. It does fluctuate after all.
floatboth 8y ago
Ooh. Thanks for reminding me about spot. That's way better than the on-demand price. (Still 1/4 the cores of the Scaleway offering though.)

luckylittle 8y ago

Agree, this is still quite expensive.

etaioinshrdlu 8y ago

It seems like a better value than a t2 instance because it's not a burstable core. The network performance is probably much better on this instance type as well.

ksec 8y ago

And it doesn't come with any Storage or Network Transfer. You will soon require a Phd to figure out the cost optimisation on AWS, or simply switch to DO for a much simpler pricing.

hackbinary 8y ago
Did Amazon hire the MS licensing folks to work on their subscription prices?
- degenerate 8y ago
  No because at least they give you the prices! MS would always say you need to 'get a quote'...
  - rcarmo 8y ago
    Azure prices are (notoriously) public, and there is a nice public calculator available at: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/calculator/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/calculator/ (link may redirect to localized versions) I have no idea where you'd get the "get a quote" thing, other than corporate customers usually needing (or wanting) some hand holding and guidance given that a) most of them already have applicable discounts as part of current enterprise agreements and b) accurate quotes require more than guesswork at sizing - we take into account usage patterns, whether or not the customer can benefit from reserved instances (which significantly lower costs 1-to-3y down the road), etc. (I'm a Microsoft FTE working on Azure solutions, and have a personal Azure account which has detailed, per-resource cost breakdowns complete with links to the public pricing pages...)
    - degenerate 8y ago
      I replied to someone making reference to MS licensing pricing (like Exchange CALs and such), not Azure pricing. MS has done great work in the cloud with Azure.
    - eropple 8y ago

nivertech 8y ago

I think the high price is to amortize the Annapurna Labs acquisition and to pay for NRE. Now they will own the entire vertical stack like Apple, but unlike Apple, Amazon can live on minimal margins. BTW, apparently I predicted it in 2011 ;) "Rumors about ARM-based EC2 instances from Amazon this year. Also SSD based EBS. #aws #ec2 #arm #ssd #cloud #amazon 3:14 AM - 27 Feb 2011" https://twitter.com/nivertech/status/41667359487823872 https://twitter.com/nivertech/status/41667359487823872

simonh 8y ago
> I think the high price is to amortize the Annapurna Labs acquisition and to pay for NRE. I don't think that's a useful way to think about pricing a product or service. The price has to be driven by the market, not your costs, which means ultimately your costs have to be driven by the market as well or you're done for. I suspect they're pricing this a little high because they don't have a lot of them yet, meanwhile plenty of people will pay a bit extra to get a chance to try this out and do proof-of-concepts on them. As long as the market created by the latter matches the availability due to the former, this will work out fine for Amazon. They can always lower prices as these become more mainstream. Novelty value can be real value.
- londons_explore 8y ago
  Neither google nor microsoft have ARM CPU's yet, so there is as-yet no price competition.
  - reitzensteinm 8y ago
    Only for situations where ARM is an absolute requirement, which are few and far between.
  - dboreham 8y ago
    Packet.net (bare metal cloud hosting vendor) have ARM instances.
  - floatboth 8y ago

londons_explore 8y ago

I was hoping for something in the $0.10 /month range. An A53 type multicore ARM CPU works out at only $5 or so to buy, and only $3 per year of power to run, so a timeshare on a single core of that machine ought not cost much!

bdcravens 8y ago
Are the employees free? As well as memory, motherboard, etc?