Amazon EC2 Dedicated Hosts pricing

The table below lists the instance family and instance size configurations supported on Dedicated Hosts. The table also includes information on the number of instances you can run for a specific instance size and family based on the physical core capacity associated with the Dedicated Host. For more information on instances, visit EC2 Instance Types.

Some Dedicated Hosts powered by the AWS Nitro System support multiple instance types within the same instance family on a host (please see Dedicated Hosts user guide). For example, when you allocate a R5 Dedicated Host, you can use a host with 2 sockets and 48 physical cores to run different R5 instance types such as r5.2xlarge, r5.4xlarge, and others on the same host. You can run any number of instances up to the core capacity associated with the host. The tables below give examples of how you can run different instance types on a single host. The first table shows two scenarios for a R5 Dedicated Host, where you can run different instance types to consume the 48 physical cores associated with the host. The second table shows two scenarios for a C5 Dedicated Host, where you can run different instance types to consume the 36 physical cores associated with the host. The third table shows four scenarios for a T3 Dedicated Host, where you can run different instance types to consume the 48 physical cores associated with the host.

You can choose from three different pricing models to pay for Dedicated Hosts: On-Demand, Reservation Pricing, and Savings Plans.

When you pay On-Demand for Dedicated Hosts, you pay for each second (minimum of 60 seconds) that the Dedicated Host is active in your account (or allocated). You can terminate billing for any particular On-Demand Dedicated Host by releasing it. On-Demand gives you the flexibility to scale up or down without long-term commitments. To learn more about how to allocate or release a Dedicated Host, visit Dedicated Hosts Getting Started.

Please note that On-Demand EC2 Mac Dedicated Hosts have a minimum host allocation and billing duration of 24 hours.

Note: The u-6tb1, u-9tb1, u-12tb1, u-18tb1 and u-24tb1 Dedicated Hosts are only available on 1-Year and 3-Year Reservation terms for both virtual and metal instances. On-Demand prices for u-6tb1, u-9tb1, u-12tb1, u-18tb1, and u-24tb1 apply only when 1-Year and 3-Year reservations expire and are not renewed.

Reservations can provide up to a 70% discount compared to the On-Demand price.  Dedicated Host Reservations can be purchased using the AWS Management Console or AWS CLI.

You can choose between three Dedicated Host Reservation payment options. With the All Upfront option, you pay for the entire Dedicated Host Reservation with one upfront payment. This option provides you with the largest discount compared to On-Demand pricing. With the Partial Upfront option, you make a low upfront payment and are then charged a discounted hourly rate for the Dedicated Host for the duration of the reservation. The No Upfront option does not require an upfront payment and provides a discounted hourly rate for the duration of the term.

You can purchase Savings Plans to lower your spend on Dedicated Hosts. Savings Plans is a flexible pricing model that provides savings of up to 72% on your AWS compute usage. This pricing model offers lower prices on Amazon EC2 instances usage, regardless of instance family, size, OS, tenancy or AWS Region. Visit Savings Plans pricing page to learn more.

Subject to Microsoft licensing terms, you can bring your existing Windows Server and SQL Server licenses to Dedicated Hosts. There is no additional charge for software usage if you choose to bring your own licenses.

In addition, you can also use Windows Server AMIs provided by Amazon to run the latest versions of Windows Server on Dedicated Hosts. This is common for scenarios where you have existing SQL Server licenses eligible to run on Dedicated Hosts but need Windows Server to run the SQL Server workload. The price for using Windows Server AMIs is $0.046 per hour per vCPU. For example, if you use a Windows Server AMI to run a r5.large instance (2 vCPUs) on a host, then you are billed $0.092 per hour for the instance in addition to the charge associated with the R5 Dedicated Host. This price is consistent across all regions.

*This is the average monthly payment over the course of the Dedicated Host Reservation term. For each month, the actual monthly payment will equal the actual number of hours in that month multiplied by the hourly usage rate. The hourly usage rate is equivalent to the total average monthly payments over the term divided by the total number of hours (based on a 365 day year) over the term.

**Effective hourly pricing is shown to help you calculate the amount of money that a Dedicated Host Reservation will save you over On-Demand pricing. When you purchase a Dedicated Host Reservation, you are billed for every hour during the entire term that you select, regardless of whether the instances are running or not. The effective hourly price shows the amortized hourly cost of the Dedicated Host Reservation (this takes the total cost of the Dedicated Host Reservation over the entire term, including any upfront payment, and spreads it out over each hour of the term).

Note: Support for multiple instance types on the same Dedicated Hosts is available for instance families that are powered by the AWS Nitro System. For more information, please visit AWS Nitro System. Instance families that are not powered by the AWS Nitro System support only one instance type configuration per host.

Note: Pricing for Windows Server AMIs provided by Amazon applies to Window Server 2012, 2012 R2, 2016, 2019 and 2022. Pricing is per instance-hour consumed for each instance, from the time an instance is launched until it is terminated or stopped. Each partial instance-hour consumed will be billed as a full hour for all Windows Server instances.

Note: Contact your AWS account team for instance pricing including the cost to run private and public AMIs on different operating systems on u-6tb1, u-9tb1, u-12tb1, u-18tb1, and u-24tb1 Dedicated Hosts.

AWS does not provide accounting advice and we recommend that you ask your accountant to answer this question. We also recommend that you review the definition of the EC2 Dedicated Host before making an operational expense vs capital expense judgment on a purchase. Please visit this page for a detailed FAQ on this topic.