Instances›AWS EC2›t3›t3.micro
Compute
vCPUs2
Memory1 GiB
Mem / vCPU0.50 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 ENIs2
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.micro

t3.micro is AWS's general-purpose EC2 size at 2 vCPU and 1 GiB. In the name, "t" is burstable, "3" is the generation and "micro" 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.micro is the direct replacement at this size, scoring 38,903 CoreMark/s against this instance's 29,070 — roughly 34% more throughput for the same vCPU count. On Rackspace Spot the same shape is gp.vs1.medium — 2 vCPU, 4 GiB, matched on both dimensions, about 81% 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$0.010$0.003$0.006$0.004$0.002
$0.008 savings
US Central, Chicagono AWS region$0.016
US Central, Dallasno AWS region$0.006
Hong Kong$0.015$0.009$0.006$0.002
$0.013 savings
Sydney, Australia$0.013$0.004$0.008$0.006$0.006
$0.007 savings
London, UK$0.012$0.001$0.007$0.005$0.041
US West, San Jose$0.012$0.002$0.008$0.005$0.011
$0.001 savings
US Central, Dallas 2no AWS region$0.021
US East, N. Virginia 2$0.010$0.003$0.006$0.004$0.011
When to use it
Good for
  • ●Development, staging and CI environments
  • ●Small to mid-size relational databases
  • ●Backend services with no single dominant resource
  • ●Workloads that fit inside 1 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.micro is the newer generation at this size.
  • ●The working set needs more than 1 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 0.50 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
$8/mo on AWS on-demand against $1/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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Frequently asked questions