Understanding how Savings Plans apply to your AWS usage - Savings Plans
Calculating bills with Savings PlansSavings Plans example

Understanding how Savings Plans apply to your AWS usage

If you have active Savings Plans, they apply automatically to your eligible AWS usage to reduce your bill.

Calculating bills with Savings Plans

Savings Plans apply to your usage after the Amazon EC2 Reserved Instances (RI) are applied.

Your current Savings Plans are grouped together and applied to the eligible usage. EC2 Instance Savings Plans are applied before Compute Savings Plans because Compute Savings Plans have broader applicability.

In a Consolidated Billing Family, Savings Plans are applied first to the owner account's usage, and then to other accounts' usage. This occurs only if you have sharing enabled.

We calculate your potential savings percentages of each combination of eligible usage. This percentage compares the Savings Plans rates with your current On-Demand rates. Your Savings Plans are applied to your highest savings percentage first. If there are multiple usages with equal savings percentages, Savings Plans are applied to the first usage with the lowest Savings Plans rate. Savings Plans continue to apply until there are no more remaining usages, or your commitment is exhausted. Any remaining usage is charged at the On-Demand rates.

Savings Plans example

The rates in these examples are illustrative only. In this example, you have the following usage in a single hour:

  • 4x r5.4xlarge Linux, shared tenancy instances in us-east-1, running for the duration of a full hour

  • 1x m5.24xlarge Windows, dedicated tenancy instance in us-east-1, running for the duration of a full hour

  • 400 vCPU and 1,600 GB of Fargate usage in us-west-1

  • 1 million requests for 512 MB (0.5 GB) memory of AWS Lambda usage in us-east-2, lasting for 3 seconds each

Pricing example
On-Demand rate Compute Savings Plans rate Savings percentage (off On-Demand) EC2 Instance Savings Plans rate Savings percentage (off On-Demand)
r5.4xlarge Linux $1.00 $0.70 30% $0.60 40%
Fargate vCPU $0.04 $0.03 25% N/A N/A
Fargate GB $0.004 $0.003 25% N/A N/A
m5.24xlarge Windows $10.00 $8.20 18% $7.80 22%
Lambda duration (per GB/sec) $0.000015 $0.00001275 15% N/A N/A
Lambda requests (per 1M requests) $0.20 $0.20 0% N/A N/A

This example assumes one-year duration, partial upfront Savings Plans matching the configuration of your usage. Rates and discount percentages are hypothetical for simplification.

Example scenarios

Scenario 1: Savings Plans apply to all usage

You purchase a one-year, partial upfront Compute Savings Plan with a $50.00/hour commitment.

Your Savings Plan covers all of your usage because multiplying each of your usages by the equivalent Compute Savings Plans is $47.13. This is still less than the $50.00/hour commitment.

Without Savings Plans, you would be charged at On-Demand rates in the amount of $59.10.

Scenario 2: Savings Plans apply to some usage

You purchase a one-year, partial upfront Compute Savings Plan with a $2.00/hour commitment.

In any hour, your Savings Plans apply to your usage starting with the highest discount percentage (30 percent).

Your $2.00/hour commitment is used to cover approximately 2.9 units of this usage. The remaining 1.1 units are charged at On-Demand rates, resulting in $1.14 of On-Demand charges for r5.

The Fargate m5.24xlarge and Lambda usage are also charged at On-Demand rates, resulting in $55.10 of On-Demand charges. The total On-Demand charges for this usage are $56.24.

Scenario 3: Savings Plans apply to some usage, across products

You purchase a one-year, partial upfront Compute Savings Plan with a $19.60/hour commitment.

Your Savings Plans are first applied to the r5.4xlarge because it has the highest discount percentage (30 percent).

Savings Plans apply to the Fargate usage next because it has the next highest discount percentage (25 percent). Savings Plans apply to memory (GB) before compute (vCPU) because it has the lower Savings Plans rate. The hourly commitment of $19.60 is met, and the remaining usage is charged at On-Demand rates.

The m5.24xlarge and Lambda usage on On-Demand charges are $32.70.

Scenario 4: Savings Plans and EC2 reserved instances apply to the usage

You purchase a one-year, partial upfront Compute Savings Plan with an $18.20/hour commitment. You have two EC2 Reserved Instances (RI) for r5.4xlarge Linux shared tenancy in us-east-1.

First, the RI covers two of the r5.4xlarge instances. Then, the Savings Plans rate is applied to the remaining r5.4xlarge and the Fargate usage, which exhausts the hourly commitment of $18.20.

The m5.24xlarge and Lambda usage On-Demand charges are $32.70.

Scenario 5: Multiple Savings Plans apply to the usage

You purchase a one-year, partial upfront EC2 Instance Family Savings Plan for the r5 family in us-east-1 with a $3.00/hour commitment. You also have a one-year, partial upfront Compute Savings Plan with a $16.80/hour commitment.

Your EC2 Instance Family Savings Plan (r5, us-east-1) covers all of the r5.4xlarge usage because multiplying the usage by the EC2 Instance Family Savings Plan rate is $2.40. This is less than the $3.00/hour commitment.

Next, the Compute Savings Plan is applied to the Fargate usage because it has the highest discount percentage (25 percent) of the remaining usage. Savings Plans apply to memory (GB) before compute (vCPU) because memory has the lower Savings Plans rate. The hourly commitment of $16.80 is met, and the remaining usage is charged at On-Demand rates.

The m5.24xlarge and Lambda usage On-Demand charges are $32.70.

For more information, see Understanding Consolidated Bills in the AWS Billing and Cost Management User Guide.