Instances›AWS EC2›c4›c4.xlarge
Compute
vCPUs4
Memory7.5 GiB
Mem / vCPU1.88 GiB
ProcessorXeon E5-2666 v3
Clock speed2.9 GHz
Architecturex86_64
Storage
TypeEBS only
Bandwidth750 Mbps
Throughput93.75 MB/s
IOPS6,000
Networking
PerformanceHigh
Max ENIs4
IPv6Yes
GPUNone
Family sizes
c4.large2 vCPU · 3.75 GiB
c4.xlarge4 vCPU · 7.5 GiB
c4.2xlarge8 vCPU · 15 GiB
c4.4xlarge16 vCPU · 30 GiB
c4.8xlarge36 vCPU · 60 GiB
c4.xlarge

The c4.xlarge pairs 4 vCPU with 7.5 GiB of RAM, the 1.88 GiB-per-vCPU ratio that marks a compute-optimized instance. In the name, "c" stands for compute, "4" is the generation and "xlarge" is the size within the c4 family. It runs on Intel Xeon E5-2666 v3 (Haswell) at 2.9 GHz, and AWS introduced it in January 2015. AWS has since shipped c5, c6i, c7i and c8i; c5.xlarge is the direct replacement at this size, scoring 72,684 CoreMark/s against this instance's 67,359 — roughly 8% more throughput for the same vCPU count. ch.vs1.large on Rackspace Spot lines up one-for-one: 4 vCPU and 8 GiB, about 89% below the US East (N. Virginia) on-demand rate.

Pricing by region
1 hr
RegionAWS on-demandAWS Spot1-yr Reserved3-yr ReservedRackspace SpotYou save
US East, N. Virginia$0.199$0.063$0.126$0.089$0.021
$0.178 savings
US Central, Chicagono AWS region$0.011
US Central, Dallasno AWS region$0.021
Hong Kong$0.036
Sydney, Australia$0.261$0.095$0.168$0.125$0.011
$0.250 savings
London, UK$0.237$0.068$0.164$0.125$0.026
$0.211 savings
US West, San Jose$0.249$0.068$0.170$0.123$0.031
$0.218 savings
US Central, Dallas 2no AWS region$0.041
US East, N. Virginia 2$0.199$0.063$0.126$0.089$0.031
$0.168 savings
When to use it
Good for
  • ●Game servers and matchmaking
  • ●Batch processing and CI/CD runners
  • ●Video encoding and transcoding
  • ●Workloads that fit inside 7.5 GiB of RAM
  • ●Small, steady services that do not need more than 4 vCPU
Avoid if
  • ●Starting a new deployment. c5.xlarge is the newer generation at this size.
  • ●The working set needs more than 7.5 GiB of RAM
  • ●Local NVMe or instance-store disk is a hard requirement
  • ●GPU or FPGA acceleration is needed
  • ●Memory-hungry applications. A memory-optimized family gives more RAM per dollar.
  • ●More than 1.88 GiB of RAM per vCPU is needed — that ratio is fixed for the whole family
$145/mo on AWS on-demand against $15/mo on Rackspace Spot for the equivalent — market-priced, not list-priced.
  • Spot sells spare capacity at market prices. It is the cheapest compute on the internet.
  • Prices are set by supply and demand. You pay what the market decides.
  • Compute is delivered as fully managed Kubernetes. All infrastructure is taken care of.
  • Egress costs $0.01/GB after the free allowance. AWS charges $0.09/GB.
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