This post originally appeared on the CohesiveFT blog

Amazon recently announced the new t2 family of low end instances, which I wrote about on InfoQ. Pricing wise the headline is that the t2.micro is ¢1.3/hr, which is a fair bit cheaper than the ¢2/hr of the t1.micro it replaces. It also has much better performance, and more consistent performance, and more transparent performance characteristics, and more RAM.

¢1.3/hr is good, but it’s still not sub penny. It somehow reminds me of the big old pre decimal pennies that people still had in little china pots when I was a kid.

¢1.3/hr is however the on demand pricing. It’s also possible to get t2.micro reserved instances in medium and heavy usage varieties. Pushing things to the max gets a 3yr heavy utilisation reserved instance that costs $109 up front and ¢0.2/hr. If we leave the instance up for the full 3 years, and amortise the $109 up front then that comes out to ¢0.615/hr – a little less than half the on demand pricing.

¢0.615/hr – now that’s sub penny :)