EC2 pricing · Burstable
t3.small price in us-east-2 (Ohio): per hour & per month
Updated 2026-10-19
$25,000 in credits runs one t3.small in US East (Ohio) for about 1646 months (credits usually expire in 12 to 24).
t3.small (2 vCPU, 2 GiB, Intel Skylake E5 2686 v5) costs $0.0208 per hour on demand in US East (Ohio), or $15.18 for a 730-hour month on Linux.
General purpose instance with 2 vCPU and 2 GiB: balanced CPU and memory for web apps, APIs, small databases and containers.
- On demand
- $0.0208/h
- Monthly (730h)
- $15.18
- Specs
- 2 vCPU, 2 GiB, Intel Skylake E5 2686 v5
Is t3.small right for you?
What 2 GiB of RAM runs
- ✓ Staging or dev environment
- ✓ Small static or Node/Go API
- ✓ Bastion host, cron jobs, webhooks
- ✕ Running a database on the same server
- ✕ Java/Spring or heavy Rails apps
- ✕ Anything with steady high CPU
Burstable CPU: read this first
t3.small 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 (Ohio)
Priced like N. Virginia with fewer historic outages. A good default US region.
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$71
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 (Ohio) 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.small for about 137.2 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 (Ohio).
Running Postgres yourself on a second t3.small costs about $16.78/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 ($0.0208/h)$15
gp3 storage ($0.0800/GB)$2
Public IPv4 ($0.0050/h)$4
Data out (after 100 GB free)$0
Monthly total$21
Credits last
$1,00047 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 | $0.0208 | $15 | 0% | Credits apply |
| Savings Plan, 1 year | $0.0150 | $11 | 28% | No upfront; credits can't buy the commitment |
| Savings Plan, 3-yr | $0.0103 | $8 | 50% | Compute Savings Plan, no upfront; credits can't buy the commitment |
| Reserved Instance, 3-yr | $0.0090 | $7 | 57% | Standard RI, no upfront; credits can't buy the commitment |
| Spot (average) | $0.0041 | $3 | 80% | Can be interrupted; credits apply |
| Windows on demand | $0.0392 | $29 | +88% vs Linux | Includes the Windows licence; credits apply |
t3.small in other regions
| Region | Per hour | Per month | vs here | $25k lasts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US East (N. Virginia)us-east-1 | $0.0208 | $15 | 0% | 1646 mo |
| US East (Ohio)us-east-2 | $0.0208 | $15 | — | 1646 mo |
| US West (Oregon)us-west-2 | $0.0208 | $15 | 0% | 1646 mo |
| EU (Stockholm)eu-north-1 | $0.0216 | $16 | +4% | 1585 mo |
| Asia Pacific (Mumbai)ap-south-1 | $0.0224 | $16 | +8% | 1529 mo |
| EU (Ireland)eu-west-1 | $0.0228 | $17 | +10% | 1502 mo |
| Canada (Central)ca-central-1 | $0.0232 | $17 | +12% | 1476 mo |
| EU (London)eu-west-2 | $0.0236 | $17 | +13% | 1451 mo |
| EU (Frankfurt)eu-central-1 | $0.0240 | $18 | +15% | 1427 mo |
| Asia Pacific (Singapore)ap-southeast-1 | $0.0264 | $19 | +27% | 1297 mo |
| Asia Pacific (Sydney)ap-southeast-2 | $0.0264 | $19 | +27% | 1297 mo |
| Africa (Cape Town)af-south-1 | $0.0271 | $20 | +30% | 1264 mo |
| Asia Pacific (Tokyo)ap-northeast-1 | $0.0272 | $20 | +31% | 1259 mo |
| South America (Sao Paulo)sa-east-1 | $0.0336 | $25 | +62% | 1019 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.small in other regions
Alternatives in us-east-2
All t3.small prices · All EC2 instances
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Questions
How much does t3.small cost per month in us-east-2?
$15.18 on demand for Linux running all 730 hours, before storage, public IPv4 and data transfer.
Can AWS credits pay for t3.small?
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.small?
A 1-year Savings Plan brings it to $0.015/h and 3 years to $0.0103/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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