The m8gb.12xlarge pairs 48 vCPU with 192 GiB of RAM, the 4.00 GiB-per-vCPU ratio that marks a general-purpose instance. In the name, "m" is the general-purpose line, "8" is the generation, "gb" marks AWS Graviton (ARM) processors and block-storage optimisation and "12xlarge" is the size within the m8gb family. It runs on AWS Graviton4 Processor at 2.8 GHz, and AWS introduced it in December 2025. AWS has since shipped m9g; m9g.12xlarge is the direct replacement at this size, scoring 1,757,705 CoreMark/s against this instance's 1,395,856 — roughly 26% more throughput for the same vCPU count. Spot's node ladder tops out below this size, so m8gb.12xlarge becomes 3 × gp.vs2.2xlarge (48 vCPU, 192 GiB combined), $3.49/hr on AWS in US East (N. Virginia), from $0.123/hr on Rackspace Spot. Spot delivers compute as managed Kubernetes, so a node pool of that size is the native shape of the answer rather than a workaround — provided the workload scales horizontally.
| Region | AWS on-demand | AWS Spot | 1-yr Reserved | 3-yr Reserved | Rackspace Spot | You save |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US East, N. Virginia | $3.492 | $0.551 | $0.123 | $3.369 savings | ||
| US Central, Chicago | no AWS region | $0.123 | ||||
| US Central, Dallas | no AWS region | $0.153 | ||||
| Hong Kong | $0.033 | |||||
| Sydney, Australia | $0.483 | |||||
| London, UK | $0.663 | |||||
| US West, San Jose | $0.453 | |||||
| US Central, Dallas 2 | no AWS region | $0.003 | ||||
| US East, N. Virginia 2 | $3.492 | $0.551 | $0.453 | $3.039 savings |