Generating Amazon EC2 estimates

You can use the AWS Pricing Calculator to estimate costs for your Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances. This section provides the procedure on how to generate an Amazon EC2 estimate and describes the specifications, payment options, and add-ons you can choose for your Amazon EC2 estimate.

Procedure

To generate an Amazon EC2 estimate

1. Open the Amazon EC2 estimate page at https://calculator.aws/#/createCalculator/ec2-enhancement .

2. Enter the description for your Amazon EC2 estimate.

3. Choose the Location type and Region from the dropdown.

4. (Optional) Choose the parameters you want in your estimate.

   • Amazon EC2 instance specifications

   • Payment options

   • Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS)

   • Detailed monitoring costs

   • Data transfer costs

   • Elastic IP costs

   • Additional costs

5. Choose Save and add service.

The calculator view is preloaded with default values so you can see a starting estimate without adding or changing any information. You can change any of the values for the following parameters. Otherwise, you can also keep the defaults when they're applicable.

The Amazon EC2 instance estimate path has the following sections and parameters.

Amazon EC2 instance specifications

These settings determine the Amazon EC2 instance that AWS Pricing Calculator uses to generate an estimate for you.

Select your tenancy

The default value for tenancy is Shared Instances.

Select your operating system

The operating system on an Amazon EC2 instance. AWS Pricing Calculator generates your estimate using Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) that match the OS you choose. Choose the operating system (OS) that best matches your needs. The default value for the OS is Linux.

Choose your instance type

AWS Pricing Calculator lists all available instance types. Use the search bar to filter the instances.

Search for an instance type by name

If you know the instance family or instance size that you want, it's efficient to search for the instance name. For example, you can search for a t2.medium instance.

Search for an instance type based on minimum requirements

Minimum requirements are most useful when you know the specifications of the instances that you want. For example, you can search either for an instance with a minimum of four vCPUs and 16 GB of memory for any network performance.

For information about the available Amazon EC2 instance families, see Amazon EC2 Instance Types.

Number of EC2 instances

The default value is one. AWS Pricing Calculator uses this default because it's the minimum number that you might need.

Workloads

Workloads are the usage patterns that match your Amazon EC2 usage. Choosing the workload that most closely matches what you use reduces the number of On-Demand and unused RI hours that you might purchase. It does this by covering your usage with the most appropriate combination of RIs and On-Demand Instances for you. You can define more than one workload for your estimate.

Constant usage

This workload is suitable for use cases that have a constant, predicable load. This includes use cases such as logging traffic to a website or running processes in the background.

Daily spike

This workload is best for usage patterns that peak once a day. This is suitable for scenarios where, for example, you need to run several jobs at midnight or have a morning news spike.

Weekly spike

This workload is best for patterns that peak once a week. This is suitable for scenarios such as blogs that post once a week and weekly television shows.

Monthly spike

This workload is best for traffic that spikes once a month, such as monthly invoices, payroll, or other monthly reports.

Payment options

These settings determine the pricing strategy that AWS Pricing Calculator uses to generate your estimate.

Pricing model

The pricing model determines whether you're searching for a pay-as-you-use instance or an instance that you can reserve in advance. Reserving an instance isn't the same as paying for the use of an instance.

Reservation terms

When you reserve a Reserved Instance (RI), you purchase a reservation for the period of your contract. Contracts can be for either one or three years.

The default value is one year. AWS Pricing Calculator uses this default because it's the least costly option for trying out AWS.

Payment options

For RIs, payment options determine when you pay for your reservation. You can pay for the entire reservation upfront, which is a hefty single-time payment but you have no monthly payments. You can pay for the RI with a partial upfront payment and a monthly payment. This gives you a smaller upfront cost but accrues monthly costs. You can also pay with no upfront payment. This means you pay only on a monthly basis. All upfront gives you the best discount, but no upfront and partial upfront spread your costs out over a greater period of time.

The default value for the payment options is No Upfront. AWS Pricing Calculator uses this default because it gives you the least expensive start-up price.

Expected utilization of EC2 instances

Enter the expected usage of Amazon EC2 instances. The feature is only applicable when you select the On-Demand pricing strategy.

Spot

The calculator shows the historical average discount percentage for the instance chosen. You can enter a percentage discount for creating estimates.

Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS)

These settings determine the Amazon EBS settings that AWS Pricing Calculator uses to generate an estimate for you. Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) is a type of storage that you can connect to your Amazon EC2 instance. You can use it to do things such as backing up your instance, creating a boot volume, or running a database on your instance. For more information about Amazon EBS, see the Amazon Elastic Block Store documentation.

Storage volume

The storage volume determines what kind of storage that Amazon EBS assigns to your instance. Different types have different capabilities. For example, you can choose better I/O and faster calculations, or slower, less expensive options for your specific use cases such as boot volumes and backups.

Storage amount

The storage amount determines how much storage your Amazon EBS volume has.

The default value is 30 GB. You can enter 0 GB if you don't attach Amazon EBS volumes to your Amazon EC2 instance. You can also estimate additional Amazon EBS volumes by configuring and adding a standalone Amazon EBS calculator into your estimate at https://calculator.aws/#/createCalculator/EBS .

Detailed monitoring costs

Your instances are turned on for basic monitoring by default. You can optionally turn on detailed monitoring. Once detailed monitoring is turned on, the Amazon EC2 console shows monitoring graphs with a one minute period for the instance. For more information, see Detailed monitoring.

Data transfer costs

You can accrue additional costs by transferring data in and out of Amazon EC2. If you know how much data you can expect to upload or download in a month, you can add these costs to your estimate. For more information, see the Data transfer section on the On-Demand Pricing page.

Elastic IP costs

You can have one Elastic IP (EIP) address associated with a running instance at no charge. If you associate additional EIPs with that instance, you will be charged for each additional EIP associated with that instance per hour on a pro rata basis. A small hourly charge applies when EIPs are not associated with a running instance or when they are associated with a stopped instance or unattached network interface. For more information, see Elastic IP Addresses section on the On-Demand Pricing page.

Additional costs

You can add a custom cost to your Amazon EC2 pricing estimates. You can use this to add any placeholder costs you'd like to include in your estimates.