AWS Savings Plans Calculator

Q: What is the difference between Savings Plans and Reserved Instances?

Reserved Instances are tied to an instance type and region, and some also reserve capacity. Savings Plans commit to a rate of spend instead, so the discount follows you across instance families, sizes, and in the case of Compute Savings Plans across EC2, Fargate, and Lambda. Savings Plans do not reserve capacity.

Q: Which plan type should I choose?

Choose an EC2 Instance Savings Plan when a workload is stable and you know it will stay on the same instance family in the same region, since the discount is deeper. Choose a Compute Savings Plan when the architecture is still moving or spans Fargate and Lambda, and pay a little discount for that freedom.

Q: What happens if my usage drops below the commitment?

You are billed for the committed amount regardless. The commitment is an hourly floor for the whole term, so under-use is paid for rather than refunded. This is the main reason to commit to a conservative baseline rather than an optimistic projection.

Q: What happens to usage above the commitment?

Anything beyond the committed hourly amount is billed at standard On-Demand rates. There is no penalty for exceeding the commitment, which is why a partial commitment covering the baseline is usually safer than trying to cover every hour of usage.

Q: Can I cancel a Savings Plan?

No. Savings Plans cannot be cancelled or resold once purchased, and unlike Standard Reserved Instances there is no marketplace to offload them. The commitment runs for the full one or three year term, so treat the decision as irreversible when sizing it.

EC2 Calculator Savings Plan S3 Calculator

Savings Plan costs

Resource Details

Instance 1In Progress

Machine Type

Region

Instance Usage (in days)

days

Quantity

Estimation

Choose Your Savings Plan

On-demand pricing

1yr Plan

- 0 %

3yrs Plan

- 0 %

ItemAmount

Estimated Total

$0/ mo

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HOW TO USE THIS CALCULATOR

Estimate your AWS bill in three steps

Configure your instances

Select a machine type (e.g. m5.large) and AWS region for each workload. Pricing varies by region — us-east-1 is typically the cheapest baseline.

Set usage and quantity

Enter how many days per month each instance runs and how many instances you need. A 24/7 workload is 30 days; dev environments often run 22 or fewer.

Compare and decide

Add as many configurations as you like — the estimate totals everything instantly and updates live as you switch pricing plans, regions, or currency.

PRICING MODEL

How Savings Plans pricing works

A Savings Plan is a commitment to spend a fixed amount per hour on compute for one or three years, in exchange for a lower rate on everything that commitment covers. Usage up to the committed amount is billed at the discounted rate; anything above it falls back to On-Demand. Because the commitment is denominated in dollars per hour rather than in specific instances, it keeps its value when you resize, change instance family, or migrate between compute services.

There are two variants and they trade flexibility against discount depth. Compute Savings Plans apply across EC2, Fargate, and Lambda in any region and any instance family, and carry the smaller discount. EC2 Instance Savings Plans lock you to a specific instance family in a specific region and discount more steeply in return. Payment structure adds a third dimension: All Upfront discounts most, Partial Upfront sits in the middle, and No Upfront spreads the commitment across the term at the shallowest discount.

What drives your Savings Plans bill

Commitment level

You commit to a dollar-per-hour figure, not to instances. Commit below your steady-state baseline and you leave savings unclaimed; commit above it and you pay for capacity you never use.

Plan type

Compute Savings Plans work across EC2, Fargate, and Lambda in any region for a smaller discount. EC2 Instance Savings Plans discount more but bind you to one instance family in one region.

Term length

Three year terms discount substantially more than one year terms. The trade is forecasting risk: three years is a long time to predict a workload that may be re-architected.

Payment option

All Upfront gives the deepest discount, Partial Upfront less, and No Upfront the least. The gap between them is usually smaller than the gap between one and three year terms.

Coverage and utilisation

The useful measures are how much of your usage the plan covers and how much of the plan your usage consumes. Chasing full coverage typically strands commitment during troughs.

Savings Plans pricing questions

How much should I commit to?

Commit to your steady-state baseline rather than your average or peak. The floor of your usage over a representative period is the portion that runs regardless of traffic, and committing to roughly that level captures most of the discount without stranding commitment during quiet periods.

What is the difference between Savings Plans and Reserved Instances?

Which plan type should I choose?

What happens if my usage drops below the commitment?

What happens to usage above the commitment?

Can I cancel a Savings Plan?