# EC2

## AWS EC2 — commitment brief

> **Data sourced**: March 2026. Verify current figures at the [AWS Pricing Calculator](https://calculator.aws/pricing/2/home).

### Coverage summary

Amazon EC2 offers the broadest commitment coverage of any AWS service, supporting Standard Reserved Instances, Convertible Reserved Instances, EC2 Instance Savings Plans, and Compute Savings Plans. Standard RIs deliver the deepest discounts (up to 72%) but are locked to a specific instance family, OS, tenancy, and region. Convertible RIs sacrifice a few percentage points of discount in exchange for the ability to exchange across instance families, OS, and tenancy. Savings Plans offer flexible spend commitments that automatically apply across eligible usage without locking to a specific instance type.

**What is covered**: EC2 instance compute charges (the underlying hardware cost). All major instance families across all AWS regions are eligible for at least one commitment instrument.

**What is not covered**: EC2 Spot Instance charges (Spot pricing model; no commitment instruments apply), Dedicated Host charges (separate reservation model via Dedicated Host Reservations), data transfer, EBS storage volumes, Elastic IP addresses, NAT Gateway charges, and any associated software license costs (e.g., Windows Server, Red Hat, SQL Server — licensed separately or via BYOL).

### RI types and Savings Plan types

> Amazon EC2 supports four commitment instruments: **Standard RI** (highest discount, locked to instance family/OS/tenancy/region, exchangeable on RI Marketplace), **Convertible RI** (slightly lower discount, allows exchanges across families/OS/tenancy), **EC2 Instance Savings Plan** (flexible within an instance family in a region, roughly equivalent discount to Standard RI), and **Compute Savings Plan** (most flexible — applies across EC2 instance families, regions, Fargate, and Lambda, at \~3–4% lower discount ceiling than EC2 Instance SP). All Upfront payment gives the maximum discount for each instrument; No Upfront gives the minimum.

### Instance / node / tier coverage

| Instance Family                            | Standard RI | Convertible RI | EC2 Instance SP | Compute SP | 1-yr (All Upfront) | 3-yr (All Upfront) | Notes                                                                 |
| ------------------------------------------ | ----------- | -------------- | --------------- | ---------- | ------------------ | ------------------ | --------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| General Purpose — M (m5, m6i, m7i, m7g…)   | ✅ Yes       | ✅ Yes          | ✅ Yes           | ✅ Yes      | \~40%              | \~60%              | Most broadly deployed family                                          |
| General Purpose — T (t3, t3a, t4g…)        | ✅ Yes       | ✅ Yes          | ✅ Yes           | ✅ Yes      | \~40%              | \~60%              | Burstable; RI applies to baseline + burst hours at on-demand price    |
| Compute Optimized — C (c5, c6i, c7i, c7g…) | ✅ Yes       | ✅ Yes          | ✅ Yes           | ✅ Yes      | \~40%              | \~60%              |                                                                       |
| Memory Optimized — R (r5, r6i, r7i, r7g…)  | ✅ Yes       | ✅ Yes          | ✅ Yes           | ✅ Yes      | \~40%              | \~60%              |                                                                       |
| Memory Optimized — X (x1e, x2idn…)         | ✅ Yes       | ✅ Yes          | ✅ Yes           | ✅ Yes      | \~40%              | \~60%              | High-memory; check region availability                                |
| Memory Optimized — z1d                     | ✅ Yes       | ✅ Yes          | ✅ Yes           | ✅ Yes      | \~40%              | \~60%              |                                                                       |
| Storage Optimized — I (i3, i4i…)           | ✅ Yes       | ✅ Yes          | ✅ Yes           | ✅ Yes      | \~40%              | \~60%              | NVMe SSD; RI covers compute only, not local storage billing structure |
| Storage Optimized — D (d2, d3…)            | ✅ Yes       | ✅ Yes          | ✅ Yes           | ✅ Yes      | \~40%              | \~60%              | Dense HDD storage                                                     |
| Storage Optimized — H (h1)                 | ✅ Yes       | ✅ Yes          | ✅ Yes           | ✅ Yes      | \~40%              | \~60%              |                                                                       |
| Accelerated — P (p3, p4d, p5…)             | ✅ Yes       | ✅ Yes          | ✅ Yes           | ✅ Yes      | \~40%              | \~60%              | GPU (ML/HPC); software licenses extra                                 |
| Accelerated — G (g4dn, g5, g6…)            | ✅ Yes       | ✅ Yes          | ✅ Yes           | ✅ Yes      | \~40%              | \~60%              | GPU (graphics/ML inference)                                           |
| Accelerated — Inf (inf1, inf2)             | ✅ Yes       | ✅ Yes          | ✅ Yes           | ✅ Yes      | \~40%              | \~60%              | AWS Inferentia chips                                                  |
| Accelerated — Trn (trn1…)                  | ✅ Yes       | ✅ Yes          | ✅ Yes           | ✅ Yes      | \~40%              | \~60%              | AWS Trainium chips                                                    |
| HPC — Hpc (hpc6a, hpc7g…)                  | ✅ Yes       | ✅ Yes          | ✅ Yes           | ✅ Yes      | \~40%              | \~60%              | High-performance computing                                            |
| Spot Instances                             | ❌ No        | ❌ No           | ❌ No            | ❌ No       | —                  | —                  | Spot pricing model; not reservable                                    |
| Dedicated Hosts                            | ❌ No        | ❌ No           | ❌ No            | ❌ No       | —                  | —                  | Separate Dedicated Host Reservation instrument                        |

### RI vs. Savings Plan

**Standard RI**: Locked to a specific instance family, region, OS, and tenancy. Delivers the deepest discount of all EC2 commitment instruments — up to 72% off on-demand with 3-year All Upfront. Supports modification of AZ, instance size (Linux/Unix), and networking type. Unused Standard RIs can be listed for sale on the EC2 RI Marketplace (subject to AWS restrictions).

**Convertible RI**: Same 1-yr/3-yr terms and payment options as Standard RI, but supports exchange across instance families, OS, and tenancy via the ExchangeReservedInstances API. Maximum discount is \~66% (3-yr All Upfront), roughly 5–6 percentage points lower than Standard. Cannot be listed on the RI Marketplace.

**EC2 Instance Savings Plan**: Spend commitment ($/hour) that automatically applies to any EC2 usage within a chosen instance family in a specific region, regardless of size, OS, or tenancy. Discount ceiling comparable to Standard RI (\~72%). More operational flexibility than RIs — no need to manage instance-type or size locks.

**Compute Savings Plan**: Most flexible instrument — covers EC2 (any family, any region), AWS Fargate, and AWS Lambda in a single hourly spend commitment. Discount ceiling \~66% for EC2 usage. Automatically applies across all eligible services. Ideal for organizations with diverse or shifting compute footprints.

## Regional availability

**Commitment scope**: Regional RIs apply across all AZs in a region with instance-size flexibility (Linux/Unix); Zonal RIs are tied to a specific AZ and provide a capacity reservation but no size flexibility. EC2 Instance Savings Plans are scoped to a single instance family within a region. Compute Savings Plans are region-flexible — they apply across any EC2 family, any region, Fargate, and Lambda automatically.

Available in all commercial AWS regions. Reserved Instances (Standard and Convertible) and Savings Plans are supported globally across all standard AWS regions.

**Partition notes**: GovCloud (us-gov-*) regions support EC2 Reserved Instances, but Savings Plans cannot be purchased directly from GovCloud accounts — they must be purchased in a linked standard account and applied to GovCloud usage. The RI Marketplace (resale of unused Standard RIs) is not supported in GovCloud. China (cn-*) regions support EC2 Reserved Instances but Savings Plans are not available in China regions.

⚠️ Regional and partition availability varies by instance type. Always verify at the [AWS Pricing Console](https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/) before purchasing.

### Archera

Amazon EC2 is a core service within Archera's commitment management scope. Archera can automate RI purchase (Standard and Convertible) and Savings Plan commitments, monitor utilization at the instance-family level, right-size commitments as your fleet evolves, and wrap all commitments in a GRI/GSP — eliminating downside risk on over-commitment while preserving the full RI or Savings Plan discount.

***

**Sources**

* [Amazon EC2 Reserved Instances](https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/reserved-instances/)
* [EC2 Reserved Instance Pricing](https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/reserved-instances/pricing/)
* [Reserved Instances for Amazon EC2 overview](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/ec2-reserved-instances.html)
* [Compute Savings Plans](https://aws.amazon.com/savingsplans/compute-pricing/)
* [What are Savings Plans?](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/savingsplans/latest/userguide/what-is-savings-plans.html)
* [Compute Savings Plans and Reserved Instances](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/savingsplans/latest/userguide/sp-ris.html)

⚠️ Discount percentages are approximate and region/instance-type-dependent. Always verify with the [AWS Pricing Calculator](https://calculator.aws/pricing/2/home).