AWS Savings Plans are a flexible pricing model offered by Amazon Web Services that provide significant cost savings compared to on-demand pricing. Essentially, by committing to a consistent amount of usage for one or three years, you can save up to 72% on certain AWS services.
There are two main types of Savings Plans:
- Compute Savings Plans:
- These plans provide flexibility across a range of AWS services, such as EC2 instances, AWS Lambda, and AWS Fargate.
- You can apply the savings across different instance families, regions, and operating systems, which offers a great deal of flexibility if your usage patterns change over time.
- EC2 Instance Savings Plans:
- These are specific to EC2 usage and offer savings when you commit to using a particular instance family within a region, for a fixed term (1 or 3 years).
- This plan provides more significant savings but is less flexible than the Compute Savings Plans.
Key Features:
- Flexible Commitment: You commit to a certain usage level (measured in $/hour) for a 1- or 3-year period, but you can use those savings across different services or instance families (depending on the plan).
- Upfront, Partial Upfront, or No Upfront Payment Options: You can choose how to pay for the savings plan. Upfront payments typically yield the highest savings.
- Automatic Application: AWS applies the savings to your usage automatically, so there’s no need to manually track or configure them.
- Regional Flexibility (for Compute Savings Plans): Unlike EC2 Instance Savings Plans, Compute Savings Plans can apply across multiple regions, which can be helpful if your resource utilization shifts geographically.
Benefits:
- Cost Savings: By committing to usage, you can save up to 72% compared to on-demand pricing.
- Flexibility: Especially for Compute Savings Plans, you get the flexibility to shift workloads across services and regions while still benefiting from discounts.
- Simplicity: You don’t need to manually manage instance types or regions, which can simplify budgeting and cost management.
AWS Savings Plans are a great option for businesses with predictable usage patterns who want to optimize their AWS costs over time.