Skip to content

Compute: EC2, ECS, and owned servers

Current EC2/ECS reference prices, family and region factors, commitment economics, and the discrete break-even curve for stable owned compute.
Important

Snapshot: 2026-08-22 · AWS us-east-1 prices exclude applicable tax · Alibaba Cloud cn-hangzhou public prices include China-site tax · 1 USD = 6.7817 CNY, 730 hours/month. Prices are not performance benchmarks.

Direct answer

Inside a mainstream instance family, price is almost linear in vCPU. Buying a larger shape reduces instance count, not unit-core price. The variables that move unit cost are memory ratio, CPU architecture, generation, region, purchase term, and—most importantly—useful utilization.

For stable owned compute, the material-cost curve falls rapidly while the first server fills, jumps when active and spare servers are added, then flattens. The economic question is not “how large is the company?” but “can this workload keep the minimum reliable pool usefully full for the asset life?”

Current 2C8G reference shapes

Offer Billing Native price 730-hour month CNY / vCPU-month
AWS m8i.large, 2C8G On-demand $0.10584/h $77.26 ¥261.99
Alibaba g9i.large, 2C8G Monthly — ¥238.60 ¥119.30
Alibaba g9i.large, 2C8G PAYG ¥0.4971/h ¥362.88 ¥181.44

The raw cash-price ratio is not a procurement conclusion. m8i and g9i differ in CPU, network, storage channel, regional context, tax, and business performance. Normalize with application TPS, latency, compile throughput, or another useful output before choosing.

The family skeleton

Same-vCPU prices reveal a repeatable memory-ratio structure:

Family Shape Monthly reference Relative to general purpose
AWS c7i.large 2C4G $65.15 0.885
AWS m7i.large 2C8G $73.58 1.000
AWS r7i.large 2C16G $96.58 1.313
Alibaba c9i.large 2C4G ¥185.91 0.779
Alibaba g9i.large 2C8G ¥238.60 1.000
Alibaba r9i.large 2C16G ¥317.48 1.330

Moving from large to xlarge or 2xlarge inside the same family remains nearly linear. Exceptions—burstable CPU, local disks, dedicated hosts, bare metal, GPUs, NUMA, and commercial licenses—carry separate fixed or step meters.

Architecture, generation, and region

The snapshot’s price factors are meaningful only as provider pricing intent:

  • AWS m7g/m7i = 0.810; m8g/m8i = 0.848. Graviton is 15–19% cheaper in list price, but application compatibility and useful performance decide value.
  • Alibaba Yitian g8y.large is ¥192/month, versus Intel g8i.large at ¥251.16; current long-term discounts can still change the total ordering.
  • AWS m8i.large regional factor ranges from 1.000 in core US regions to 1.250 Singapore, 1.292 Tokyo, and 1.594 São Paulo.
  • Alibaba g9i.large is at factor 1.000 in Hangzhou/Shanghai/Beijing, 0.900 Ulanqab, 1.770 Singapore, 1.798 Tokyo, and 1.929 Hong Kong.

Region is not a coupon code. Data sovereignty, latency, service coverage, disaster-recovery topology, and cross-region traffic can dominate the instance factor.

Elasticity and commitment

Alibaba g9i.large PAYG at 730 hours costs ¥362.88, or 1.521× the ¥238.60 monthly price. The time-only crossing is:

238.60/0.4971730=65.8% of the month \frac{238.60 / 0.4971}{730} = 65.8\%\text{ of the month}

For any commitment factor ff and realized utilization uu:

effective discount=1−fu \text{effective discount} = 1 - \frac{f}{u}

A five-year term and a purchased server both transfer demand risk to the customer. Compare unused commitment, generation lock, cash opportunity cost, residual value, failure replacement, and exit terms—not just the discount.

The owned-compute curve

The scenario uses a DHH-class 2U server with 192 vCPU, 384 GiB RAM, fleet-average 19.2 TB local NVMe, purchase price about ¥169,500, five-year life, and 70% target fill. A spare is added from the second active server onward. Internal labor, migration, application changes, and business risk are excluded.

Stable business vCPU Total servers Cash material cost / vCPU-month
16 1 ¥220.36
32 1 ¥110.18
64 1 ¥55.09
128 1 ¥27.54
192 3 ¥55.09
512 5 ¥40.15
1,000 9 ¥31.63
4,000 32 ¥27.56
64,000 501 ¥22.89

The first server filling from 16 to 128 vCPU cuts unit cost eightfold. Expanding from 4,000 to 64,000 vCPU—16× more scale—cuts it only another 17%. Most scale economy arrives at the beginning; later results are driven by utilization and hardware life.

First and durable crossings

Cloud comparison Cloud CNY / vCPU-month First below cloud Durable below cloud
AWS c7a on-demand ¥254.07 14 vCPU 14 vCPU
AWS c7a 3-year Standard RI proxy ¥100.32 36 vCPU 36 vCPU
Alibaba c8i PAYG ¥148.81 24 vCPU 24 vCPU
Alibaba c8i 5-year public term ¥29.35 121 vCPU 2,972 vCPU

“First” means one fill interval becomes cheaper. “Durable” means later server, spare, rack, and network steps no longer push cost back above the cloud line. The AWS RI row uses an m7i discount factor as a proxy for c7a, not a quoted c7a RI offer.

Sensitivity: why the five-year comparison is fragile

Change AWS 3-year durable crossing Alibaba 5-year durable crossing
Baseline 36 vCPU 2,972 vCPU
50% target utilization 106 vCPU no durable crossing below 200,000 vCPU
85% target utilization 36 vCPU 984 vCPU
Hardware price -25% 29 vCPU 724 vCPU
Hardware price +25% 43 vCPU 12,634 vCPU
Three-year hardware life 162 vCPU no durable crossing below 200,000 vCPU
Seven-year hardware life 28 vCPU 701 vCPU

Against expensive on-demand compute, reasonable scenarios cross early. Against a deep five-year term near hardware amortization, utilization and asset life can change the answer by orders of magnitude.

Decision zones

Stable workload Baseline reading
<16 vCPU On-demand cloud usually wins the fixed-cost problem
16–64 vCPU Owned material cost can beat PAYG; short commitments may still win
64–134 vCPU High-fill single-server sweet spot; still a single failure domain unless designed otherwise
134–600 vCPU Expansion sawtooth matters; quote the actual server and spare plan
600–3,000 vCPU Owned compute is durable versus 1–3 year terms; five-year outcome depends on fill
3,000+ vCPU Under baseline life/fill, owned material cost is durably below all modeled offers

Cloud remains strongest for unknown duration, high peak/mean ratio, global small footprints, interruptible work, and rapid release. Owned compute is strongest for stable, long-lived, standardized workloads with existing procurement and operations capability.

Historical context

AWS ~2C8G advertised-capacity price fell 73.5% from 2007 to 2026, but almost all list-price decline occurred before 2017. Alibaba 2C8G monthly price fell only 21.0% from 2016 to 2026 while PAYG fell 62.1%, largely by narrowing the elasticity premium. Mature FinOps therefore means benchmarking and migrating, not waiting for automatic cuts. See Cloud price history.

Data and sources