I’ve heard lots of anecdotal over the years about which AWS regions are the cheapest, with both Ireland, and North Virginia coming up frequently. But whilst researching the cheapest AWS region I was amazed to see there was no data about which AWS region is the cheapest—so I crunched my own data.
Which AWS region is the cheapest? The US Regions Ohio, North Virginia and Oregon are the cheapest (based on S3, EC2, RDS and Lambda), followed by EU regions (e.g. Stockholm, Ireland and London), then the Asia Pacific AWS regions (e.g. Tokyo and Seoul), and finally South America (e.g. Sao Paulo) which is the most expensive.
Analysing The Cheapest AWS Region
To find the cheapest AWS region I analysed data across the AWS regions comparing the cost of the following AWS services: AWS S3, EC2, RDS, and Lambda. Let me just go ahead and share the results with you…
You can find the raw data here (data taken from AWS cost calculator)
Key Findings
- Costs can almost double between AWS regions
- Northern California is the most expensive US region
- Costs are grouped roughly by continent, i.e North America, Europe, Asia Pacific then South America
- Sao Paulo is the most expensive AWS region
- AWS Lambda has the most consistent pricing
Finding Your Cheapest AWS Region
Of course, this cost analysis should form only the start of your research, as all architectures differ, so you’ll want an accurate estimate based on your situation.
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