EC2 pricing · Burstable
t3.medium price in us-east-1 (N. Virginia): per hour & per month
Updated 2026-10-19
$25,000 in credits runs one t3.medium in US East (N. Virginia) for about 823 months (credits usually expire in 12 to 24).
t3.medium (2 vCPU, 4 GiB, Intel Skylake E5 2686 v5) costs $0.0416 per hour on demand in US East (N. Virginia), or $30.37 for a 730-hour month on Linux.
x86-only dev/test servers, small legacy apps and Windows-free workloads whose binaries are not available for ARM. Burstable Intel CPU for spiky, low-average load.
- On demand
- $0.0416/h
- Monthly (730h)
- $30.37
- Specs
- 2 vCPU, 4 GiB, Intel Skylake E5 2686 v5
Is t3.medium right for you?
What 4 GiB of RAM runs
- ✓ MVP backend with a few hundred users
- ✓ Single Docker service or small Kubernetes node
- ✓ CI runner, internal tools
- ✕ Large in-memory caches
- ✕ Production database with growing data
- ✕ Video or ML processing
Burstable CPU: read this first
t3.medium can use about 20% of each vCPU all the time. Above that it spends CPU credits it earns while idle.
T3 runs in Unlimited mode by default: if you stay above baseline you pay about $0.04 per vCPU-hour extra. Steady busy servers are cheaper on m6i or c6i.
x86 compatibility
Intel Skylake E5 2686 v5 runs any x86 software unchanged. If your stack supports Arm, the Graviton version is usually around 20% cheaper.
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$86
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 t3.medium for about 68.6 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.t3.medium, single zone, 20 GB) costs about $54.86/month in US East (N. Virginia).
Running Postgres yourself on a second t3.medium costs about $31.97/month, but you handle backups, upgrades and failover.
Both are paid by AWS credits. Upfront fees for reserved databases are not.
Disk speed limits
Steady disk speed: 347 Mbps and 2,000 IOPS.
Short bursts up to 2,085 Mbps and 11,800 IOPS, for about 30 minutes a day, then it drops back.
A busy database or heavy file processing may hit this limit before CPU or memory.
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 ($0.0416/h)$30
gp3 storage ($0.0800/GB)$2
Public IPv4 ($0.0050/h)$4
Data out (after 100 GB free)$0
Monthly total$36
Credits last
$1,00027 mo
$5,00099+ 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 | $0.0416 | $30 | 0% | Credits apply |
| Savings Plan, 1 year | $0.0300 | $22 | 28% | No upfront; credits can't buy the commitment |
| Savings Plan, 3-yr | $0.0206 | $15 | 50% | Compute Savings Plan, no upfront; credits can't buy the commitment |
| Reserved Instance, 3-yr | $0.0180 | $13 | 57% | Standard RI, no upfront; credits can't buy the commitment |
| Spot (average) | $0.0154 | $11 | 63% | Can be interrupted; credits apply |
| Windows on demand | $0.0600 | $44 | +44% vs Linux | Includes the Windows licence; credits apply |
t3.medium in other regions
| Region | Per hour | Per month | vs here | $25k lasts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US East (N. Virginia)us-east-1 | $0.0416 | $30 | — | 823 mo |
| US East (Ohio)us-east-2 | $0.0416 | $30 | 0% | 823 mo |
| US West (Oregon)us-west-2 | $0.0416 | $30 | 0% | 823 mo |
| EU (Stockholm)eu-north-1 | $0.0432 | $32 | +4% | 793 mo |
| Asia Pacific (Mumbai)ap-south-1 | $0.0448 | $33 | +8% | 764 mo |
| EU (Ireland)eu-west-1 | $0.0456 | $33 | +10% | 751 mo |
| Canada (Central)ca-central-1 | $0.0464 | $34 | +12% | 738 mo |
| EU (London)eu-west-2 | $0.0472 | $34 | +13% | 726 mo |
| EU (Frankfurt)eu-central-1 | $0.0480 | $35 | +15% | 713 mo |
| Asia Pacific (Singapore)ap-southeast-1 | $0.0528 | $39 | +27% | 649 mo |
| Asia Pacific (Sydney)ap-southeast-2 | $0.0528 | $39 | +27% | 649 mo |
| Africa (Cape Town)af-south-1 | $0.0542 | $40 | +30% | 632 mo |
| Asia Pacific (Tokyo)ap-northeast-1 | $0.0544 | $40 | +31% | 630 mo |
| South America (Sao Paulo)sa-east-1 | $0.0672 | $49 | +62% | 510 mo |
Right-size it
Linux, shared tenancy, from the AWS Price List API (2026-10-19). Network: Up to 5 Gbps. Taxes not included. AWS EC2 pricing
t3.medium in other regions
Alternatives in us-east-1
- t4g.medium · $0.0336/h
- t3.large · $0.0832/h
- t4g.medium · 2 vCPU, 4 GiB · $0.0336/h
All t3.medium prices · All EC2 instances
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Questions
How much does t3.medium cost per month in us-east-1?
$30.37 on demand for Linux running all 730 hours, before storage, public IPv4 and data transfer.
Can AWS credits pay for t3.medium?
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 t3.medium?
A 1-year Savings Plan brings it to $0.03/h and 3 years to $0.0206/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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