Calculate Your AWS EC2 Monthly Costs 🌎

How It's Calculated

The fundamental formula powering this calculator is:

Monthly Cost ($) = Hourly Price ($/hr) × Hours per Day (hr/day) × Days per Month (days/mo)
Annual Cost ($)  = Monthly Cost × 12
Reserved Saving  = Monthly Cost × 0.40   // 1-year Standard RI average discount
RI Monthly Cost  = Monthly Cost × 0.60

AWS bills EC2 in per-second increments (with a 60-second minimum), but for monthly budgeting purposes, the hourly × hours × days model is the industry-standard approximation and matches AWS Cost Explorer projections within <1% for always-on workloads.

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Reference Table — Common EC2 On-Demand Prices (us-east-1, Linux, 2025)

> Prices reflect us-east-1 (N. Virginia) Linux on-demand rates. Windows adds ~$0.012–$0.20/hr depending on instance size. Prices vary by region — eu-west-1 is typically 10–15% higher.

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Typical Use Cases with Real Numbers

Example 1 — Always-On Web Server

$0.0832/hr × 24 hr/day × 30 days = $59.90/month  (on-demand)
$59.90 × 12 = $718.80/year  (on-demand)
1-yr Standard RI annual upfront: ~$435  (~39% savings)

Break-even vs. on-demand: month 1 (upfront RI pays for itself within the first year by definition).

Example 2 — Nightly Batch Job

$0.34/hr × 6 hr/day × 30 days = $61.20/month

Because the instance runs only 25% of the day, a Spot Instance (typically 60–90% cheaper than on-demand) would cost ~$6–$24/month — a much better fit than an RI commitment.

Example 3 — Right-Sizing Comparison

m6i.2xlarge: $0.384 × 24 × 30 = $276.48/month
m6i.large:   $0.096 × 24 × 30 = $69.12/month
Monthly savings: $207.36  |  Annual savings: $2,488.32

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Common Mistakes

1. Forgetting data transfer costs: EC2 compute is just one line item. Outbound data transfer costs $0.09/GB (first 10 TB/month). A server pushing 5 TB/month adds $450 — often larger than the compute bill itself.

2. Using on-demand pricing for always-on workloads: Running an instance 24/7 for 12+ months and not purchasing Reserved Instances wastes 40–60% of compute budget. AWS's own Cost Optimization Hub flags this automatically.

3. Comparing across regions without adjusting price: The same m6i.large costs $0.096/hr in us-east-1 but $0.114/hr in ap-southeast-1 (~19% more). Multi-region budgets must use region-specific pricing from the AWS Pricing API.

4. Ignoring EBS storage costs: A 100 GB gp3 EBS volume adds $8/month on top of compute — easy to overlook when an instance has multiple attached volumes.

5. Treating the 40% RI discount as fixed: The actual discount ranges from ~20% (convertible, 1-year, no upfront) to ~62% (standard, 3-year, all upfront). This calculator uses 40% as the conservative 1-year Standard RI average for Linux in us-east-1.

6. Not accounting for Savings Plans: EC2 Instance Savings Plans offer similar discounts to RIs (up to 72% vs. on-demand) with more flexibility — they apply to any instance in a family regardless of size or OS.