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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Top comments (5)
Great analysis Lou! Had a question if you could please weigh in,
Could selecting a cheaper faraway region subsequently prove expensive due to:
a. increased latency affecting the website's speed/functionality?
b. add upto data transfer costs?
c. affect compliance processes that may require data to be stored locally?
Hey Vinay!
a. yep, definitely could see some increased latencies, that's your trade-off!
b. I'm no expert in data-transfer costs, but it depends on what, and how much you're transferring and between where, the cost calculator has options for data transfer, so you can get a ball park: calculator.aws/#/createCalculator/... my experience has been that estimating costs is difficult, and the best bet is to run some hands-on tests as soon as possible to see what results you get, but that's always skewed by economies of scale (cheaper, yay!) and also when you bust through free tier amounts (more expensive, boo!).
c. definitely, a victim of the compliance here, gotta do what they say...
I also published this recently, which might also be useful to you dev.to/aws-builders/how-to-find-wh...
You might also find this infographic useful as a high-level: lastweekinaws.com/wp-content/uploa...
This does help, Lou. I figured point a would be a trade-off but now I'm more certain.
Point b is indeed tough to estimate but AWS cost explorer helps navigate it. Data transfers can be reduced within VPC & similarly for S3 (where significant data flows in/out). This should help more on the latter.
Being compliant as per point c is tough, remaining so is even more. :D
The infographic/your blog to find the optimum AWS region is the proverbial cherry on the cake, cheers 🍒 🍻
Interesting! Thanks for the analysis Lou!
You're very welcome, Helen! Thanks for the great content, also! 🚀🚀🚀