EC2 pricing · General purpose
m8g.xlarge price in us-east-1 (N. Virginia): per hour & per month
Updated 2026-10-19
$25,000 in credits runs one m8g.xlarge in US East (N. Virginia) for about 191 months (credits usually expire in 12 to 24).
m8g.xlarge (4 vCPU, 16 GiB, AWS Graviton4) costs $0.1795 per hour on demand in US East (N. Virginia), or $131 for a 730-hour month on Linux.
General purpose instance with 4 vCPU and 16 GiB: balanced CPU and memory for web apps, APIs, small databases and containers.
- On demand
- $0.1795/h
- Monthly (730h)
- $131
- Specs
- 4 vCPU, 16 GiB, AWS Graviton4
Is m8g.xlarge right for you?
What 16 GiB of RAM runs
- ✓ Production API with steady traffic
- ✓ Self-hosted Postgres or Redis
- ✓ Several containers on one host
- ✕ Tiny side projects (you'll overpay)
- ✕ GPU-bound AI workloads
Full-time CPU
No burst limits: all 4 vCPUs are yours 100% of the time, so it suits steady traffic, builds and background jobs.
Arm (Graviton) checklist
AWS Graviton4 is usually 20% cheaper than the x86 equivalent for similar speed.
Build Docker images for linux/arm64 (or multi-arch). Node, Python, Go, Java and Ruby run fine; check native modules and closed-source agents.
About US East (N. Virginia)
Usually the cheapest region and the first to get new services. CloudFront certificates must be issued here. Has had the most large-scale outages, so keep backups elsewhere.
Moving data between availability zones costs about $0.01/GB each way.
The real bill for a small production setup
The server is rarely the biggest line. A typical setup behind a load balancer in a private network:
About per month$187
Load balancer: $0.0225/h plus about $0.40/month in usage for 1 million requests. NAT gateway: $0.045/h plus $0.045/GB processed. Moving data between availability zones adds $0.01/GB each way. Skip the NAT gateway with public subnets or VPC endpoints to save $33/month. Prices for US East (N. Virginia) from the AWS Price List API (2026-10-19). Both are covered by AWS credits.
Credits expire before you can use them all
$25,000 would run one m8g.xlarge for about 15.9 years, but credits usually expire in 12 to 24 months. Spend the surplus on a managed database, staging environments or load testing instead of leaving it unused.
Credits pay on-demand and Spot usage, not upfront Savings Plan or Reserved Instance commitments. Buy commitments only once credits run low.
Database, disk and traffic
Managed database vs running it yourself
A managed PostgreSQL database (RDS db.t4g.medium, single zone, 20 GB) costs about $49.75/month in US East (N. Virginia).
Running Postgres yourself on a second m8g.xlarge costs about $133/month, but you handle backups, upgrades and failover.
Both are paid by AWS credits. Upfront fees for reserved databases are not.
Sending 1 TB a month to users
Straight from the server: about $81.00/month ($0.09/GB after the first 100 GB).
Through CloudFront: $0. Server-to-CloudFront traffic is free and the first 1 TB out each month is free (then $0.085/GB for United States edges).
RDS, CloudFront and transfer prices from the AWS Price List API; VPS prices from Hetzner and DigitalOcean, excluding VAT (2026-10-19).
Full monthly bill calculator
Instances rarely run alone. Add disk, a public IP and traffic to see the real bill and how long credits last.
Compute ($0.1795/h)$131
gp3 storage ($0.0800/GB)$2
Public IPv4 ($0.0050/h)$4
Data out (after 100 GB free)$0
Monthly total$137
Credits last
$1,0007.3 mo
$5,00036 mo
$25,00099+ mo
$100,00099+ mo
Credits usually expire in 12 to 24 months, so long runways are capped by expiry.
On demand vs Savings Plans, Reserved, Spot and Windows
| Pricing | Per hour | Per month | Saving | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| On demand | $0.1795 | $131 | 0% | Credits apply |
| Savings Plan, 1 year | $0.1319 | $96 | 27% | No upfront; credits can't buy the commitment |
| Savings Plan, 3-yr | $0.0910 | $66 | 49% | Compute Savings Plan, no upfront; credits can't buy the commitment |
| Reserved Instance, 3-yr | $0.0814 | $59 | 55% | Standard RI, no upfront; credits can't buy the commitment |
| Spot (average) | $0.0826 | $60 | 54% | Can be interrupted; credits apply |
| Windows on demand | n/a | n/a | n/a | AWS doesn't offer Windows on Arm (Graviton) servers |
m8g.xlarge in other regions
| Region | Per hour | Per month | vs here | $25k lasts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Asia Pacific (Mumbai)ap-south-1 | $0.1283 | $94 | -29% | 267 mo |
| US East (N. Virginia)us-east-1 | $0.1795 | $131 | — | 191 mo |
| US East (Ohio)us-east-2 | $0.1795 | $131 | 0% | 191 mo |
| US West (Oregon)us-west-2 | $0.1795 | $131 | 0% | 191 mo |
| EU (Stockholm)eu-north-1 | $0.1908 | $139 | +6% | 180 mo |
| EU (Ireland)eu-west-1 | $0.2001 | $146 | +11% | 171 mo |
| Canada (Central)ca-central-1 | $0.2001 | $146 | +11% | 171 mo |
| EU (London)eu-west-2 | $0.2076 | $152 | +16% | 165 mo |
| EU (Frankfurt)eu-central-1 | $0.2151 | $157 | +20% | 159 mo |
| Asia Pacific (Singapore)ap-southeast-1 | $0.2244 | $164 | +25% | 153 mo |
| Asia Pacific (Sydney)ap-southeast-2 | $0.2244 | $164 | +25% | 153 mo |
| Asia Pacific (Tokyo)ap-northeast-1 | $0.2319 | $169 | +29% | 148 mo |
| Africa (Cape Town)af-south-1 | $0.2375 | $173 | +32% | 144 mo |
| South America (Sao Paulo)sa-east-1 | $0.2861 | $209 | +59% | 120 mo |
Right-size it
Linux, shared tenancy, from the AWS Price List API (2026-10-19). Network: Up to 12.5 Gbps. Taxes not included. AWS EC2 pricing
m8g.xlarge in other regions
Alternatives in us-east-1
- m8g.large · $0.0898/h
- m8g.2xlarge · $0.359/h
- t4g.xlarge · 4 vCPU, 16 GiB · $0.1344/h
- m7g.xlarge · 4 vCPU, 16 GiB · $0.1632/h
- t3.xlarge · 4 vCPU, 16 GiB · $0.1664/h
- m6i.xlarge · 4 vCPU, 16 GiB · $0.192/h
All m8g.xlarge prices · All EC2 instances
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Questions
How much does m8g.xlarge cost per month in us-east-1?
$131 on demand for Linux running all 730 hours, before storage, public IPv4 and data transfer.
Can AWS credits pay for m8g.xlarge?
Yes. Activate credits cover on-demand EC2 usage. They don't cover upfront Reserved Instances or Savings Plan commitments.
Is a Savings Plan worth it for m8g.xlarge?
A 1-year Savings Plan brings it to $0.1319/h and 3 years to $0.091/h. While credits last, on demand is usually better because credits can't buy the commitment.
Prices and credit amounts are estimates and may change. Check AWS for current terms.
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