c5a.xlarge pricing and specs in US East (N. Virginia)
4 vCPU · 8 GiB · Up to 10 Gigabit · AMD EPYC 7R32
$0.1540/hour on-demand · $112/month (Linux, Shared)
c5a.xlarge is a compute-optimized EC2 instance with 4 vCPU and 8 GiB, generation 5 of the c family. On-demand it costs $0.1540 an hour, about $112 a month if it runs all month. A one-year commitment with nothing up front works out at $0.0970 an hour and pays for itself above roughly 459 hours a month; below that, on-demand is cheaper. The three-year options go down to $0.0579 an hour, 62% below on-demand. The newer c6g.xlarge offers the same size for $0.1360 an hour, 12% less and moves to Graviton. Across regions the cheapest place to run c5a.xlarge is Asia Pacific (Mumbai) (ap-south-1) at $0.0940 an hour, 39% below US East (N. Virginia).
Pricing by OS (hourly, USD, Shared)
| Option | Linux | Windows | RHEL | SUSE | Ubuntu Pro |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| On-Demand | $0.1540 | $0.3380 | $0.2120 | $0.2100 | $0.1610 |
| Spot | $0.0706 | $0.1994 | — | — | — |
| 1y Std RI NU | $0.0970 | $0.2810 | $0.1550 | $0.1470 | — |
| 1y Std RI PU | $0.0922 | $0.2762 | $0.1502 | $0.1421 | — |
| 1y Std RI AU | $0.0905 | $0.2745 | $0.1482 | $0.1405 | — |
| 3y Std RI NU | $0.0670 | $0.2510 | $0.1240 | $0.1120 | — |
| 3y Std RI PU | $0.0618 | $0.2458 | $0.1188 | $0.1063 | — |
| 3y Std RI AU | $0.0579 | $0.2419 | $0.1155 | $0.1029 | — |
| 1y Conv RI NU | $0.1120 | $0.2960 | $0.1690 | $0.1620 | — |
| 3y Conv RI NU | $0.0740 | $0.2580 | $0.1320 | $0.1190 | — |
| 1y Compute SP NU | $0.1120 | $0.2960 | $0.1690 | $0.1620 | $0.1170 |
| 3y Compute SP NU | $0.0740 | $0.2580 | $0.1320 | $0.1190 | $0.0790 |
| 1y EC2 SP NU | $0.0970 | $0.2810 | $0.1550 | $0.1470 | $0.1030 |
| 3y EC2 SP NU | $0.0670 | $0.2510 | $0.1240 | $0.1120 | $0.0710 |
Spot by AZ (7-day p50, Linux): us-east-1b $0.0706 · us-east-1a $0.0658 · us-east-1c $0.0760 · us-east-1f $0.0636 · us-east-1d $0.0718
Newer generations of the same size
Same family letter and size in a newer generation, ranked by price. “vCPU per $” uses vCPU as the performance proxy — newer chips usually add more, so it is a floor.
Graviton-eligible → c6g.xlarge (-12%)| Type | $/h | Price Δ | vCPU per $ Δ | Saves / mo |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| c6g.xlarge Graviton arch change | $0.1360 | -12% | +13% | $13 |
| c7g.xlarge Graviton arch change | $0.1450 | -6% | +6% | $7 |
| c6a.xlarge | $0.1530 | -0.6% | +0.7% | $1 |
| c6gd.xlarge Graviton arch change | $0.1536 | -0.3% | +0.3% | $0 |
| c8g.xlarge Graviton arch change | $0.1595 | +4% | -3% | $-4 |
| c7i-flex.xlarge | $0.1696 | +10% | -9% | $-11 |
| c6i.xlarge | $0.1700 | +10% | -9% | $-12 |
| c5.xlarge | $0.1700 | +10% | -9% | $-12 |
Cheapest regions for c5a.xlarge
| Region | On-Demand $/h | vs us-east-1 | Saves / mo |
|---|---|---|---|
| Asia Pacific (Mumbai) ap-south-1 | $0.0940 | -39% | $44 |
| US East (N. Virginia) us-east-1 | $0.1540 | current | — |
| US East (Ohio) us-east-2 | $0.1540 | 0.0% | $0 |
| US West (Oregon) us-west-2 | $0.1540 | 0.0% | $0 |
| EU (Stockholm) eu-north-1 | $0.1640 | +6% | $-7 |
| Canada (Central) ca-central-1 | $0.1680 | +9% | $-10 |
Caveat: instance price is only part of the bill. Cross-region and internet data transfer, latency to your users, data-residency rules and service availability can outweigh a few percent on compute.
Price history (us-east-1)
Daily snapshots since the catalog started tracking this type; a row is added whenever a headline price changes.
| Date | OD Linux | OD Windows | 1y RI | 3y RI | Spot p50 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-11-05 | $0.1540 | $0.3380 | $0.0970 | $0.0670 | $0.0706 |
| 2026-11-04 | $0.1540 | $0.3380 | $0.0970 | $0.0670 | $0.0685 |
| 2026-11-03 | $0.1540 | $0.3380 | $0.0970 | $0.0670 | $0.0686 |
| 2026-10-30 | $0.1540 | $0.3380 | $0.0970 | $0.0670 | $0.0705 |
| 2026-10-29 | $0.1540 | $0.3380 | $0.0970 | $0.0670 | $0.0704 |
| 2026-10-28 | $0.1540 | $0.3380 | $0.0970 | $0.0670 | $0.0693 |
| 2026-10-27 | $0.1540 | $0.3380 | $0.0970 | $0.0670 | $0.0691 |
| 2026-10-25 | $0.1540 | $0.3380 | $0.0970 | $0.0670 | $0.0683 |
| 2026-10-23 | $0.1540 | $0.3380 | $0.0970 | $0.0670 | $0.0686 |
| 2026-10-22 | $0.1540 | $0.3380 | $0.0970 | $0.0670 | $0.0699 |
| 2026-10-21 | $0.1540 | $0.3380 | $0.0970 | $0.0670 | $0.0703 |
| 2026-10-20 | $0.1540 | $0.3380 | $0.0970 | $0.0670 | $0.0705 |
| 2026-10-19 | $0.1540 | $0.3380 | $0.0970 | $0.0670 | $0.0710 |
| 2026-10-18 | $0.1540 | $0.3380 | $0.0970 | $0.0670 | $0.0707 |
| 2026-10-14 | $0.1540 | $0.3380 | $0.0970 | $0.0670 | $0.0701 |
| 2026-10-11 | $0.1540 | $0.3380 | $0.0970 | $0.0670 | $0.0707 |
| 2026-10-07 | $0.1540 | $0.3380 | $0.0970 | $0.0670 | $0.0708 |
| 2026-10-06 | $0.1540 | $0.3380 | $0.0970 | $0.0670 | $0.0711 |
| 2026-10-05 | $0.1540 | $0.3380 | $0.0970 | $0.0670 | $0.0712 |
| 2026-10-04 | $0.1540 | $0.3380 | $0.0970 | $0.0670 | $0.0713 |
| 2026-10-03 | $0.1540 | $0.3380 | $0.0970 | $0.0670 | $0.0716 |
| 2026-10-02 | $0.1540 | $0.3380 | $0.0970 | $0.0670 | $0.0721 |
| 2026-09-30 | $0.1540 | $0.3380 | $0.0970 | $0.0670 | $0.0723 |
| 2026-09-29 | $0.1540 | $0.3380 | $0.0970 | $0.0670 | $0.0725 |
| 2026-09-28 | $0.1540 | $0.3380 | $0.0970 | $0.0670 | $0.0726 |
| 2026-09-25 | $0.1540 | $0.3380 | $0.0970 | $0.0670 | $0.0727 |
| 2026-09-24 | $0.1540 | $0.3380 | $0.0970 | $0.0670 | $0.0732 |
| 2026-09-23 | $0.1540 | $0.3380 | $0.0970 | $0.0670 | $0.0735 |
| 2026-09-22 | $0.1540 | $0.3380 | $0.0970 | $0.0670 | $0.0746 |
All attributes
- vCPU
- 4
- Cores / threads per core
- 2 / 2
- Memory
- 8 GiB
- Memory per vCPU
- 2.00 GiB
- Processor
- AMD EPYC 7R32
- Architecture
- x86_64
- Sustained clock
- 3.3 GHz
- Hypervisor
- nitro
- Generation
- Current
- Burstable
- No
- Bare metal
- No
- Free tier eligible
- No
- Network performance
- Up to 10 Gigabit
- Network baseline / burst
- 1.25 / 10.0 Gbps
- Max ENIs × IPv4 per ENI
- 4 × 15
- IPv6 / ENA / EFA
- IPv6 / ENA / —
- EBS optimized
- Yes
- EBS bandwidth (baseline / max)
- 400 / 3170 Mbps
- EBS IOPS (baseline / max)
- 1,600 / 13300
- EBS NVMe
- required
- Instance storage
- EBS only
- GPU
- —
- Placement groups
- cluster, partition, spread
- Hibernation / Nitro Enclaves
- No / Yes
- Dedicated hosts
- —
- Boot modes
- legacy-bios, uefi
- Spot supported
- Yes
Public AWS list prices (USD), refreshed nightly (catalog 2026-11-06). RI and Savings Plan rates are effective hourly (upfront amortised over the term) and are charged for every hour of the term. Excludes taxes, data transfer and storage. How these numbers are sourced and checked. Not affiliated with Amazon Web Services.
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