Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. Amazon EC2’s simple web service interface allows you to obtain and configure capacity with minimal friction. It provides you with complete control of your computing resources and lets you run on Amazon’s proven computing environment. Amazon EC2 reduces the time required to obtain and boot new server instances to minutes, allowing you to quickly scale capacity, both up and down, as your computing requirements change. Amazon EC2 changes the economics of computing by allowing you to pay only for capacity that you actually use. Amazon EC2 provides developers the tools to build failure resilient applications and isolate themselves from common failure scenarios.
Launch an Amazon EC2 Instance for Free
Try Amazon EC2 for FreeAWS Free Tier includes 750 hours of Linux and Windows t2.micro instances each month for one year. To stay within the Free Tier, use only EC2 Micro instances.
Increase or decrease capacity within minutes, not hours or days. This is all controlled with web service APIs so your application can automatically scale itself up and down depending on its needs.
Choose from a wide selection of instance types optimized to fit different use cases. Each instance type includes one or more instance sizes, allowing you to scale your resources to the requirements of your target workload.
On-Demand Instances let you pay for compute capacity by the hour with no long-term commitments. This eliminates the need to buy “safety net” capacity to handle periodic traffic spikes. On-Demand Instances are recommended for applications with short term or unpredictable workloads that cannot be interrupted.
Reserved Instances can provide savings of up to 71% compared to using On-Demand Instances. You make a low, one-time payment for each instance you want to reserve and in turn receive a significant discount on the hourly charge for that instance. Reserved Instances are recommended for applications with steady or predictable usage or require reserved capacity.
Spot Instances allow customers to bid on unused Amazon EC2 capacity and run those instances for as long as their bid exceeds the current Spot Price. The Spot Price changes periodically based on supply and demand, and customers whose bids meet or exceed it gain access to the available Spot Instances. If you have flexible start and end times, Spot Instances can significantly lower your Amazon EC2 costs.
Try and get started with Amazon EC2 free for 12 months as part of our Free Usage Tier.