Spot Instance Limits - Overview of Amazon EC2 Spot Instances

Spot Instance Limits

There is a limit on the number of running and requested Spot Instances per AWS account per Region. Spot Instance limits are managed in terms of the number of virtual central processing units (vCPUs) that your running Spot Instances are either using or will use pending the fulfillment of open Spot Instance requests. If you terminate your Spot Instances but do not cancel the Spot Instance requests, the requests count against your Spot Instance vCPU limit until Amazon EC2 detects the Spot Instance terminations and closes the requests.

There are seven Spot Instance limits:

  • All Standard (A, C, D, H, I, M, R, T, Z) Spot Instance Requests

  • All DL Spot Instance Requests

  • All F Spot Instance Requests

  • All G and VT Spot Instance Requests

  • All Inf Spot Instance Requests

  • All P Spot Instance Requests

  • All X Spot Instance Requests

Each limit specifies the vCPU limit for one or more instance families. For information about the different instance families, generations, and sizes, see Amazon EC2 Instance Types.

With vCPU limits, you can use your limit in terms of the number of vCPUs that are required to launch any combination of instance types that meet your changing application needs. For example, say your All Standard Spot Instance Requests limit is 256 vCPUs, you could request 32 m5.2xlarge Spot Instances (32 x 8 vCPUs) or 16 c5.4xlarge Spot Instances (16 x 16 vCPUs), or a combination of any Standard Spot Instance types and sizes that total 256 vCPUs.

For more information, see Monitor Spot Instance limits and usage and Request a Spot Instance limit increase in the Amazon EC2 User Guide.