Instances›AWS EC2›t3›t3.small
Compute
vCPUs2
Memory2 GiB
Mem / vCPU1.00 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.small

The t3.small is a general-purpose AWS EC2 instance: 2 vCPU and 2 GiB of memory, 1.00 GiB per vCPU. In the name, "t" is burstable, "3" is the generation and "small" 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.small is the direct replacement at this size, scoring 37,874 CoreMark/s against this instance's 28,124 — roughly 35% 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 90% 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$0.021$0.005$0.013$0.009$0.002
$0.019 savings
US Central, Chicagono AWS region$0.016
US Central, Dallasno AWS region$0.006
Hong Kong$0.029$0.018$0.012$0.002
$0.027 savings
Sydney, Australia$0.026$0.009$0.017$0.011$0.006
$0.020 savings
London, UK$0.024$0.003$0.015$0.010$0.041
US West, San Jose$0.025$0.007$0.016$0.011$0.011
$0.014 savings
US Central, Dallas 2no AWS region$0.021
US East, N. Virginia 2$0.021$0.005$0.013$0.009$0.011
$0.010 savings
When to use it
Good for
  • ●Web and application servers with mixed CPU and memory demand
  • ●Microservices and container fleets
  • ●Development, staging and CI environments
  • ●Workloads that fit inside 2 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.small is the newer generation at this size.
  • ●The working set needs more than 2 GiB of RAM
  • ●More than 1.00 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
  • ●GPU or FPGA acceleration is needed
  • ●Sustained full-core CPU load. A compute-optimized family costs less per unit of work.
t3.small runs $15/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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