How is Amazon Lightsail cheaper than EC2?

Question

There is only one apparently abstract upside of using Lightsail, simplicity, or significantly simplified interface.

Also, the first page of Lightsail talks about lower charges. My question is how is it considered to reduce charges compared to EC2? Consider $5 Lightsail plan which charges $0.0067/hour of an instance (which is the cheapest) where EC2's same type of instance (t2.nano) costs just $0.0059/hour.

What am I missing? A detailed price comparison would be much appreciated showing how Lightsail costs lower as advertised.

Potato

If folks are interested in creating a venue for these types of questions, follow the proposal for a dedicated Cloud Computing site on StackExchange and up-vote some sample questions. – Evilminded

Answer 1

The $5 Amazon LightSail plan includes:

• A CPU that appears similar to a t2.nano ($0.0059c/hr in US regions) = approximately $4.25/month
• 20GB SSD storage, similar to Amazon EBS general purpose SSD (10c/GB/month) = $2/month
• 1TB data transfer (9c/GB = approximately $92 in US regions)

So, the real saving appears to be in Data Transfer.

Evilminded

Also I think corresponding Lightsail instance memory is higher (1GB) vs EC2 nano 512 MB – Consistence

Note that while this was true in 2017, as of 2019, Lightsail can easily be cheaper than ec2, for compute alone. For example, without reservation, a t3.nano is $0.0052/hr (~$3.87/mo), while Lightsail charges only $3.50/mo. (a t2.nano, which I think is what Lightsail uses behind-the-scenes, is currently $0.0058/hr (~$4.32/mo)). That's for a nano, the smallest instance. Now compare: a t2.2xlarge, to the current largest instance available on Lightsail: Lightsail costs $160/mo, while a t2.2xlarge would be $193.25/mo even with 1-year full-upfront reservation. Lightsail wins very easily here. – Erato

@WillPalmer Thanks for the update – Potato

Answer 2

Also with lightsail you get a static IP built into the price, with ec2 it’s about $4/month

Usa

That's not truth. IPs are free when some conditions are met. You can get one IP per EC2 instance for free. Also, the EC2 instance must be running. aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/… – Bacchanal