Instances›AWS EC2›t3›t3.medium
Compute
vCPUs2
Memory4 GiB
Mem / vCPU2.00 GiB
ProcessorSkylake E5 2686 v5
Clock speed3.1 GHz
Architecturex86_64
Storage
TypeEBS only
Bandwidth2,085 Mbps
Throughput260.625 MB/s
IOPS11,800
Networking
PerformanceUp to 5 Gigabit
Max ENIs3
IPv6Yes
GPUNone
Family sizes
t3.nano2 vCPU · 0.5 GiB
t3.micro2 vCPU · 1 GiB
t3.small2 vCPU · 2 GiB
t3.medium2 vCPU · 4 GiB
t3.large2 vCPU · 8 GiB
t3.xlarge4 vCPU · 16 GiB
t3.2xlarge8 vCPU · 32 GiB
t3.medium

The t3.medium is a general-purpose AWS EC2 instance: 2 vCPU and 4 GiB of memory, 2.00 GiB per vCPU. In the name, "t" is burstable, "3" is the generation and "medium" is the size within the t3 family. It runs on Intel Skylake E5 2686 v5 at 3.1 GHz, and AWS introduced it in August 2018. AWS has since shipped t4g and t8i; t4g.medium is the direct replacement at this size, scoring 39,180 CoreMark/s against this instance's 29,163 — roughly 34% more throughput for the same vCPU count. Rackspace Spot's gp.vs1.medium is a like-for-like substitute at 2 vCPU and 4 GiB, about 95% 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$0.042$0.013$0.026$0.018$0.002
$0.040 savings
US Central, Chicagono AWS region$0.016
US Central, Dallasno AWS region$0.006
Hong Kong$0.058$0.037$0.025$0.002
$0.056 savings
Sydney, Australia$0.053$0.019$0.033$0.023$0.006
$0.047 savings
London, UK$0.047$0.015$0.030$0.020$0.041
$0.006 savings
US West, San Jose$0.050$0.015$0.031$0.021$0.011
$0.039 savings
US Central, Dallas 2no AWS region$0.021
US East, N. Virginia 2$0.042$0.013$0.026$0.018$0.011
$0.031 savings
When to use it
Good for
  • ●Backend services with no single dominant resource
  • ●Queue workers and scheduled jobs
  • ●Web and application servers with mixed CPU and memory demand
  • ●Workloads that fit inside 4 GiB of RAM
  • ●Small, steady services that do not need more than 2 vCPU
  • ●Network-heavy services — AWS rates this size at Up to 5 Gigabit
Avoid if
  • ●Starting a new deployment. t4g.medium is the newer generation at this size.
  • ●The working set needs more than 4 GiB of RAM
  • ●GPU or FPGA acceleration is needed
  • ●Sustained full-core CPU load. A compute-optimized family costs less per unit of work.
  • ●More than 2.00 GiB of RAM per vCPU is needed — that ratio is fixed for the whole family
  • ●Local NVMe or instance-store disk is a hard requirement
t3.medium runs $30/mo on AWS on-demand. The equivalent on Rackspace Spot: $1/mo.
  • 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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