Amazon EC2 offers several types of virtual servers, also known as instances, that helps customers choose the CPU, memory, storage, and networking capacity needed to run their applications.
Currently, available Instance types are General Purpose, Compute Optimized, Memory Optimized, Accelerated Computing, Storage Optimized, and Bare Metal.
General Purpose Instances
General purpose instances are designed to give users a balance of
A1 instances are ideal for workloads supported by the Arm ecosystem. These instances do well for application such as Web Servers, Containerized microservices, caching fleets, distributed data stores and applications that need Arm instruction set.
| Model | vCPU | Mem (GiB) | Storage | Network Performance (Gbps) |
| a1.medium | 1 | 2 | EBS-Only | Up to 10 |
| a1.large | 2 | 4 | EBS-Only | Up to 10 |
| a1.xlarge | 4 | 8 | EBS-Only | Up to 10 |
| a1.2xlarge | 8 | 16 | EBS-Only | Up to 10 |
| a1.4xlarge | 16 | 32 | EBS-Only | Up to 10 |
T2 and T3 Instances offer a base level of CPU performance but have the ability to go (burst) higher when required by the work load. Ideal for applications such as websites and web applications, code repositories, development, build, test and staging environments.
| Model | vCPU* | CPU Credits/hour | Mem (GiB) | Storage | Network Performance (Gbps) |
| t3.nano | 2 | 6 | 0.5 | EBS-Only | Up to 5 |
| t3.micro | 2 | 12 | 1 | EBS-Only | Up to 5 |
| t3.small | 2 | 24 | 2 | EBS-Only | Up to 5 |
| t3.medium | 2 | 24 | 4 | EBS-Only | Up to 5 |
| t3.large | 2 | 36 | 8 | EBS-Only | Up to 5 |
| t3.xlarge | 4 | 96 | 16 | EBS-Only | Up to 5 |
| t3.2xlarge | 8 | 192 | 32 | EBS-Only | Up to 5 |
| t2.nano | 1 | 3 | 0.5 | EBS-Only | Low |
| t2.micro | 1 | 6 | 1 | EBS-Only | Low to Moderate |
| t2.small | 1 | 12 | 2 | EBS-Only | Low to Moderate |
| t2.medium | 2 | 24 | 4 | EBS-Only | Low to Moderate |
| t2.large | 2 | 36 | 8 | EBS-Only | Low to Moderate |
| t2.xlarge | 4 | 54 | 16 | EBS-Only | Moderate |
| t2.2xlarge | 8 | 81 | 32 | EBS-Only | Moderate |
M5, M5a, and M5d Instances offer a balance of compute, memory and network resources for a wide range of applications such as Web and application servers, small and medium databases, gaming servers, caching fleets and to run backend servers for Microsoft Sharepoint, SAP, cluster computing and enterprise applications.
| Model | vCPU* | Mem (GiB) | Storage (GiB) | Dedicated EBS Bandwidth (Mbps) | Network Performance (Gbps) |
| m5.large | 2 | 8 | EBS-only | Up to 3,500 | Up to 10 |
| m5.xlarge | 4 | 16 | EBS-only | Up to 3,500 | Up to 10 |
| m5.2xlarge | 8 | 32 | EBS-only | Up to 3,500 | Up to 10 |
| m5.4xlarge | 16 | 64 | EBS-only | 3,500 | Up to 10 |
| m5.12xlarge | 48 | 192 | EBS-only | 7,000 | 10 |
| m5.24xlarge | 96 | 384 | EBS-only | 14,000 | 25 |
| m5d.large | 2 | 8 | 1 x 75 NVMe SSD | Up to 3,500 | Up to 10 |
| m5d.xlarge | 4 | 16 | 1 x 150 NVMe SSD | Up to 3,500 | Up to 10 |
| m5d.2xlarge | 8 | 32 | 1 x 300 NVMe SSD | Up to 3,500 | Up to 10 |
| m5d.4xlarge | 16 | 64 | 2 x 300 NVMe SSD | 3,500 | Up to 10 |
| m5d.12xlarge | 48 | 192 | 2 x 900 NVMe SSD | 7,000 | 10 |
| m5d.24xlarge | 96 | 384 | 4 x 900 NVMe SSD | 14,000 | 25 |
| m5a.large | 2 | 8 | EBS-only | Up to 2,120 | Up to 10 |
| m5a.xlarge | 4 | 16 | EBS-only | Up to 2,120 | Up to 10 |
| m5a.2xlarge | 8 | 32 | EBS-only | Up to 2,120 | Up to 10 |
| m5a.4xlarge | 16 | 64 | EBS-only | 2,120 | Up to 10 |
| m5a.12xlarge | 48 | 192 | EBS-only | 5,000 | 10 |
| m5a.24xlarge | 96 | 384 | EBS-only | 10,000 | 20 |
| Model | vCPU* | Mem (GiB) | Storage | Dedicated EBS Bandwidth (Mbps) | Network Performance |
| m4.large | 2 | 8 | EBS-only | 450 | Moderate |
| m4.xlarge | 4 | 16 | EBS-only | 750 | High |
| m4.2xlarge | 8 | 32 | EBS-only | 1,000 | High |
| m4.4xlarge | 16 | 64 | EBS-only | 2,000 | High |
| m4.10xlarge | 40 | 160 | EBS-only | 4,000 | 10 Gigabit |
| m4.16xlarge | 64 | 256 | EBS-only | 10,000 | 25 Gigabit |
Compute Optimized instances
As the name indicates, Compute Optimized instances are great for applications that need a high amount of
| Model | vCPU* | Mem (GiB) | Storage (GiB) | Dedicated EBS Bandwidth (Mbps) | Network Performance (Gbps) |
| c5.large | 2 | 4 | EBS-Only | Up to 3,500 | Up to 10 |
| c5.xlarge | 4 | 8 | EBS-Only | Up to 3,500 | Up to 10 |
| c5.2xlarge | 8 | 16 | EBS-Only | Up to 3,500 | Up to 10 |
| c5.4xlarge | 16 | 32 | EBS-Only | 3,500 | Up to 10 |
| c5.9xlarge | 36 | 72 | EBS-Only | 7,000 | 10 |
| c5.18xlarge | 72 | 144 | EBS-Only | 14,000 | 25 |
| c5d.large | 2 | 4 | 1 x 50 NVMe SSD | Up to 3,500 | Up to 10 |
| c5d.xlarge | 4 | 8 | 1 x 100 NVMe SSD | Up to 3,500 | Up to 10 |
| c5d.2xlarge | 8 | 16 | 1 x 200 NVMe SSD | Up to 3,500 | Up to 10 |
| c5d.4xlarge | 16 | 32 | 1 x 400 NVMe SSD | 3,500 | Up to 10 |
| c5d.9xlarge | 36 | 72 | 1 x 900 NVMe SSD | 7,000 | 10 |
| c5d.18xlarge | 72 | 144 | 2 x 900 NVMe SSD | 14,000 | 25 |
| c5n.large | 2 | 5.25 | EBS-Only | Up to 3,500 | Up to 25 |
| c5n.xlarge | 4 | 10.5 | EBS-Only | Up to 3,500 | Up to 25 |
| c5n.2xlarge | 8 | 21 | EBS-Only | Up to 3,500 | Up to 25 |
| c5n.4xlarge | 16 | 42 | EBS-Only | 3,500 | Up to 25 |
| c5n.9xlarge | 36 | 96 | EBS-Only | 7,000 | 50 |
| c5n.18xlarge | 72 | 192 | EBS-Only | 14,000 | 100 |
| c4.large | 2 | 3.75 | EBS-Only | 500 | Moderate |
| c4.xlarge | 4 | 7.5 | EBS-Only | 750 | High |
| c4.2xlarge | 8 | 15 | EBS-Only | 1,000 | High |
| c4.4xlarge | 16 | 30 | EBS-Only | 2,000 | High |
| c4.8xlarge | 36 | 60 | EBS-Only | 4,000 | 10 Gigabit |
Memory Optimized instances
Memory-optimized instances offer large memory size for memory intensive applications including in-memory applications, in-memory databases, in-memory analytics solutions,
R4, R5, and R5a Instances deliver fast performance for workloads that process large data sets in memory.
These instances are great for High-performance, relational (MySQL) and NoSQL (MongoDB, Cassandra) databases, Distributed
| Model | vCPU | Mem (GiB) | Storage (GiB) | Dedicated EBS Bandwidth (Mbps) | Networking Performance (Gbps) |
| r5.large | 2 | 16 | EBS-Only | up to 3,500 | Up to 10 |
| r5.xlarge | 4 | 32 | EBS-Only | up to 3,500 | Up to 10 |
| r5.2xlarge | 8 | 64 | EBS-Only | up to 3,500 | Up to 10 |
| r5.4xlarge | 16 | 128 | EBS-Only | 3,500 | Up to 10 |
| r5.12xlarge | 48 | 384 | EBS-Only | 7,000 | 10 |
| r5.24xlarge | 96 | 768 | EBS-Only | 14,000 | 25 |
| r5d.large | 2 | 16 | 1 x 75 NVMe SSD | up to 3,500 | Up to 10 |
| r5d.xlarge | 4 | 32 | 1 x 150 NVMe SSD | up to 3,500 | Up to 10 |
| r5d.2xlarge | 8 | 64 | 1 x 300 NVMe SSD | up to 3,500 | Up to 10 |
| r5d.4xlarge | 16 | 128 | 2 x 300 NVMe SSD | 3,500 | Up to 10 |
| r5d.12xlarge | 48 | 384 | 2 x 900 NVMe SSD | 7,000 | 10 |
| r5d.24xlarge | 96 | 768 | 4 x 900 NVMe SSD | 14,000 | 25 |
| r5a.large | 2 | 16 | EBS-Only | up to 2,120 | Up to 10 |
| r5a.xlarge | 4 | 32 | EBS-Only | up to 2,120 | Up to 10 |
| r5a.2xlarge | 8 | 64 | EBS-Only | up to 2,120 | Up to 10 |
| r5a.4xlarge | 16 | 128 | EBS-Only | 2,120 | Up to 10 |
| r5a.12xlarge | 48 | 384 | EBS-Only | 5,000 | 10 |
| r5a.24xlarge | 96 | 768 | EBS-Only | 10,000 | 20 |
| Model | vCPU | Mem (GiB) | Storage | Networking Performance (Gbps) |
| r4.large | 2 | 15.25 | EBS-Only | Up to 10 |
| r4.xlarge | 4 | 30.5 | EBS-Only | Up to 10 |
| r4.2xlarge | 8 | 61 | EBS-Only | Up to 10 |
| r4.4xlarge | 16 | 122 | EBS-Only | Up to 10 |
| r4.8xlarge | 32 | 244 | EBS-Only | 10 |
| r4.16xlarge | 64 | 488 | EBS-Only | 25 |
High memory, “u”, instances have 6 TiB, 9 TiB, and 12 TiB of memory per instance. They are designed to run large in-memory databases, including production installations of SAP HANA. These instances offer bare metal performance with direct access to host hardware.
| Model | Logical Proc* | Mem (TiB) | Network Perf. (Gbps) | Dedicated EBS Bandwidth (Gbps) | Network Performance |
| u-6tb1.metal | 448 | 6 | 25 | 14 | 25 Gigabit |
| u-9tb1.metal | 448 | 9 | 25 | 14 | 25 Gigabit |
| u-12tb1.metal | 448 | 12 | 25 | 14 | 25 Gigabit |
x1 and x1e instances are well suited for in-memory databases such as SAP HANA, Big-data processing engines like
| x1e.xlarge | 4 | 122 | 1 x 120 | 500 | Up to 10 Gigabit |
| x1e.2xlarge | 8 | 244 | 1 x 240 | 1,000 | Up to 10 Gigabit |
| x1e.4xlarge | 16 | 488 | 1 x 480 | 1,750 | Up to 10 Gigabit |
| x1e.8xlarge | 32 | 976 | 1 x 960 | 3,500 | Up to 10 Gigabit |
| x1e.16xlarge | 64 | 1,952 | 1 x 1,920 | 7,000 | 10 Gigabit |
| x1e.32xlarge | 128 | 3,904 | 2 x 1,920 | 14,000 | 25 Gigabit |
| x1.16xlarge | 64 | 976 | 1 x 1,920 | 7,000 | 10 Gigabit |
| x1.32xlarge | 128 | 1,952 | 2 x 1,920 | 14,000 | 25 Gigabit |
z1d Instances deliver high compute and high memory. These instances are ideal for electronic design automation and relational database workloads.
| Model | vCPU | Mem (GiB) | Networking Performance | SSD Storage (GB) |
| z1d.large | 2 | 16 | Up to 10 Gigabit | 1 x 75 NVMe SSD |
| z1d.xlarge | 4 | 32 | Up to 10 Gigabit | 1 x 150 NVMe SSD |
| z1d.2xlarge | 8 | 64 | Up to 10 Gigabit | 1 x 300 NVMe SSD |
| z1d.3xlarge | 12 | 96 | Up to 10 Gigabit | 1 x 450 NVMe SSD |
| z1d.6xlarge | 24 | 192 | 10 Gigabit | 1 x 900 NVMe SSD |
| z1d.12xlarge | 48 | 384 | 25 Gigabit | 2 x 900 NVMe SSD |
Accelerated Computing instances
“Accelerated Computing instance family is a family of instances which use hardware accelerators, or co-processors, to perform some functions, such as floating-point number calculation and graphics processing, more efficiently than is possible in software running on CPUs.
Amazon EC2 provides three types of Accelerated Computing instances – GPU compute instances for general-purpose computing, GPU graphics instances for
P3 instances are well suited for deep learning, computational fluid dynamics, computational finance, seismic analysis, molecular modeling, genomics, rendering, and other server-side GPU compute workloads.
| Model | GPUs | vCPU | Mem (GiB) | GPU Mem (GiB) | GPU P2P | Storage (GiB) | Dedicated EBS Bandwidth | Networking Performance |
| p3.2xlarge | 1 | 8 | 61 | 16 | – | EBS-Only | 1.5 Gbps | Up to 10 Gigabit |
| p3.8xlarge | 4 | 32 | 244 | 64 | NVLink | EBS-Only | 7 Gbps | 10 Gigabit |
| p3.16xlarge | 8 | 64 | 488 | 128 | NVLink | EBS-Only | 14 Gbps | 25 Gigabit |
| p3dn.24xlarge | 8 | 96 | 768 | 256 | NVLink | 2 x 900 NVMe SSD | 14 Gbps | 100 Gigabit |
P2 instances are well suited for deep learning, graph databases, high-performance databases, computational fluid dynamics, computational finance, seismic analysis, molecular modeling, genomics, rendering, and other server-side GPU compute workloads.
| Model | GPUs | vCPU | Mem (GiB) | GPU Memory (GiB) | Network Performance |
| p2.xlarge | 1 | 4 | 61 | 12 | High |
| p2.8xlarge | 8 | 32 | 488 | 96 | 10 Gigabit |
| p2.16xlarge | 16 | 64 | 732 | 192 | 25 Gigabit |
G3 instances are ideal for applications such as 3D visualizations, graphics-intensive remote workstations, 3D rendering, video encoding, virtual reality, and other server-side graphics workloads requiring massively parallel processing power.
| Model | GPUs | vCPU | Mem (GiB) | GPU Memory (GiB) | Network Performance |
| g3s.xlarge | 1 | 4 | 30.5 | 8 | Up to 10 Gigabit |
| g3.4xlarge | 1 | 16 | 122 | 8 | Up to 10 Gigabit |
| g3.8xlarge | 2 | 32 | 244 | 16 | 10 Gigabit |
| g3.16xlarge | 4 | 64 | 488 | 32 | 25 Gigabit |
“F1 instances are designed to accelerate computationally intensive algorithms, such as data-flow or highly parallel operations not suited to general purpose CPUs.”
| Model | FPGAs | vCPU | Mem (GiB) | SSD Storage (GB) | Networking Performance |
| f1.2xlarge | 1 | 8 | 122 | 470 | Up to 10 Gigabit |
| f1.4xlarge | 2 | 16 | 244 | 940 | Up to 10 Gigabit |
| f1.16xlarge | 8 | 64 | 976 | 4 x 940 | 25 Gigabit |
Storage Optimized instances
“Dense-storage instances are designed for workloads that require high sequential read and write access to very large data sets, such as Hadoop distributed computing, massively parallel processing data
H1 instances are great for data-intensive workloads such as MapReduce and distributed file systems, applications requiring sequential access to large amounts of data on direct-attached instance storage, and applications that require high-throughput access to large quantities of data
| Model | vCPU* | Mem (GiB) | Networking Performance | Storage (GB) |
| h1.2xlarge | 8 | 32 | Up to 10 Gigabit | 1 x 2,000 HDD |
| h1.4xlarge | 16 | 64 | Up to 10 Gigabit | 2 x 2,000 HDD |
| h1.8xlarge | 32 | 128 | 10 Gigabit | 4 x 2,000 HDD |
| h1.16xlarge | 64 | 256 | 25 Gigabit | 8 x 2,000 HDD |
I3 instances are well suited for High frequency online transaction processing (OLTP) systems, Relational databases, NoSQL databases, Cache for in-memory databases (for example, Redis), Data warehousing applications, and Low latency Ad-Tech serving applications
| Model | vCPU* | Mem (GiB) | Networking Performance (Gbps) | Storage (TB) |
| i3.large | 2 | 15.25 | Up to 10 | 1 x 0.475 NVMe SSD |
| i3.xlarge | 4 | 30.5 | Up to 10 | 1 x 0.95 NVMe SSD |
| i3.2xlarge | 8 | 61 | Up to 10 | 1 x 1.9 NVMe SSD |
| i3.4xlarge | 16 | 122 | Up to 10 | 2 x 1.9 NVMe SSD |
| i3.8xlarge | 32 | 244 | 10 | 4 x 1.9 NVMe SSD |
| i3.16xlarge | 64 | 488 | 25 | 8 x 1.9 NVMe SSD |
| i3.metal | 72* | 512 | 25 | 8 x 1.9 NVMe SSD |
D2 instances are ideal for applications such as Massive parallel processing (MPP) data warehouse, MapReduce and Hadoop distributed computing and Log or data processing applications.
| Model | vCPU* | Mem (GiB) | Storage (GB) | Network Performance |
| d2.xlarge | 4 | 30.5 | 3 x 2000 HDD | Moderate |
| d2.2xlarge | 8 | 61 | 6 x 2000 HDD | High |
| d2.4xlarge | 16 | 122 | 12 x 2000 HDD | High |
| d2.8xlarge | 36 | 244 | 24 x 2000 HDD | 10 Gigabit |
For best performance, Amazon recommends customers use the latest generation instances when launching new compute services. You can get the list of current generation instance types by visiting Amazon EC2 Instance Types
