EC2 pricing · Burstable
t3.xlarge price in af-south-1 (Cape Town): per hour & per month
Updated 2026-10-19
$25,000 in credits runs one t3.xlarge in Africa (Cape Town) for about 158 months (credits usually expire in 12 to 24).
t3.xlarge (4 vCPU, 16 GiB, Intel Skylake E5 2686 v5) costs $0.217 per hour on demand in Africa (Cape Town), or $158 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
- $0.217/h
- Monthly (730h)
- $158
- Specs
- 4 vCPU, 16 GiB, Intel Skylake E5 2686 v5
Is t3.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
Burstable CPU: read this first
t3.xlarge can use about 40% 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 Africa (Cape Town)
For African users; an opt-in region you must enable in your account first.
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$229
Load balancer: $0.03/h plus about $0.48/month in usage for 1 million requests. NAT gateway: $0.057/h plus $0.057/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 $42/month. Prices for Africa (Cape Town) 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.xlarge for about 13.2 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 $62.88/month in Africa (Cape Town).
Running Postgres yourself on a second t3.xlarge costs about $161/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 $139/month ($0.154/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 $0.11/GB for South Africa 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 ($0.2170/h)$158
gp3 storage ($0.1047/GB)$3
Public IPv4 ($0.0050/h)$4
Data out (after 100 GB free)$0
Monthly total$165
Credits last
$1,0006.1 mo
$5,00030 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 | $0.2170 | $158 | 0% | Credits apply |
| Savings Plan, 1 year | $0.1776 | $130 | 18% | No upfront; credits can't buy the commitment |
| Savings Plan, 3-yr | $0.1256 | $92 | 42% | Compute Savings Plan, no upfront; credits can't buy the commitment |
| Reserved Instance, 3-yr | $0.0937 | $68 | 57% | Standard RI, no upfront; credits can't buy the commitment |
| Spot (average) | $0.0434 | $32 | 80% | Can be interrupted; credits apply |
| Windows on demand | $0.2906 | $212 | +34% vs Linux | Includes the Windows licence; credits apply |
t3.xlarge in other regions
| Region | Per hour | Per month | vs here | $25k lasts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US East (N. Virginia)us-east-1 | $0.1664 | $121 | -23% | 206 mo |
| US East (Ohio)us-east-2 | $0.1664 | $121 | -23% | 206 mo |
| US West (Oregon)us-west-2 | $0.1664 | $121 | -23% | 206 mo |
| EU (Stockholm)eu-north-1 | $0.1728 | $126 | -20% | 198 mo |
| Asia Pacific (Mumbai)ap-south-1 | $0.1792 | $131 | -17% | 191 mo |
| EU (Ireland)eu-west-1 | $0.1824 | $133 | -16% | 188 mo |
| Canada (Central)ca-central-1 | $0.1856 | $135 | -14% | 185 mo |
| EU (London)eu-west-2 | $0.1888 | $138 | -13% | 181 mo |
| EU (Frankfurt)eu-central-1 | $0.1920 | $140 | -12% | 178 mo |
| Asia Pacific (Singapore)ap-southeast-1 | $0.2112 | $154 | -3% | 162 mo |
| Asia Pacific (Sydney)ap-southeast-2 | $0.2112 | $154 | -3% | 162 mo |
| Africa (Cape Town)af-south-1 | $0.2170 | $158 | — | 158 mo |
| Asia Pacific (Tokyo)ap-northeast-1 | $0.2176 | $159 | +0% | 157 mo |
| South America (Sao Paulo)sa-east-1 | $0.2688 | $196 | +24% | 127 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.xlarge in other regions
Alternatives in af-south-1
- t3.large · $0.1085/h
- t4g.xlarge · 4 vCPU, 16 GiB · $0.1734/h
- m7g.xlarge · 4 vCPU, 16 GiB · $0.2159/h
- m8g.xlarge · 4 vCPU, 16 GiB · $0.2375/h
All t3.xlarge prices · All EC2 instances
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Questions
How much does t3.xlarge cost per month in af-south-1?
$158 on demand for Linux running all 730 hours, before storage, public IPv4 and data transfer.
Can AWS credits pay for t3.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 t3.xlarge?
A 1-year Savings Plan brings it to $0.1776/h and 3 years to $0.1256/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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