Pricing methodology and data sources
Maintained by ec2calc.cloud · Updated
AWS sources
Instance names, vCPU counts, memory and EC2 rates come from the AWS Price List API. Extended hardware specifications come from EC2 DescribeInstanceTypes. Commitment rates come from AWS pricing and Savings Plans services; Spot history comes from EC2 DescribeSpotPriceHistory. Catalog inclusion does not establish regional availability or spare capacity.
AWS Price List documentation · EC2 specifications API · Spot price history API
Quote assumptions
Instance detail quotes use us-east-1, Linux, shared tenancy, USD and on-demand compute. The calculator lets you change region and purchase model. Rates exclude EBS volumes, snapshots, data transfer, taxes, software licenses and surplus CPU-credit charges. A quote does not guarantee capacity or a future price.
Monthly compute = hourly rate × 730 hours. For example, an illustrative $0.0100 hourly rate produces $7.30 per month at continuous utilization. This example is arithmetic, not a current AWS quote. Actual months and utilization vary.
Effective commitment costs include amortized upfront payments. Compare the selected term and payment option; a discounted rate can cost more overall when committed usage goes unused.
Freshness and unavailable data
Prices are cached for 24 hours. Verified older quotes can be used for up to seven days during refresh failures, with their original observation timestamp. Catalog snapshots retain their verification date and survive restarts. Unavailable extended specifications are labelled unavailable; they are never replaced by guessed hardware facts.
Catalog refreshes run at most daily, with retries after failures. A previously verified catalog remains available during an upstream outage. Sitemap modification dates reflect published content revisions; unknown instance modification dates are omitted.
Comparisons and editorial ownership
Matching vCPU and memory counts do not imply identical performance, storage or networking. Graviton comparisons measure the difference between on-demand hourly rates, not migration ROI. Benchmark your application and verify ARM-compatible dependencies.
The ec2calc.cloud maintainers publish the guides, review assumptions, and cite official AWS references. This independent tool is not operated by Amazon Web Services.