AWS c4.4xlargevsAWS c4.xlarge

c4.4xlarge pairs 16 vCPUs with 30GB of RAM at $0.7960/hr On-Demand (about $573/mo at 24×7). c4.xlarge pairs 4 vCPUs with 7.5GB at $0.1990/hr (~$143/mo). c4.xlarge is 75% cheaper per hour than c4.4xlarge ($0.5970/hr gap).

Because both instances are in the **c4 family**, the only thing that changes between them is sizing — same silicon, same architecture (Intel Xeon (x86_64)), same burstable/sustained behavior. The choice is purely about how much capacity you actually need: c4.4xlarge gives you 16 vCPUs and 30GB of RAM, c4.xlarge gives you 4 vCPUs and 7.5GB. AWS scales pricing close to linearly within a family, so picking the right size is mostly about right-sizing your workload, not getting a better deal per vCPU.

On raw price-per-performance, the two are c4.xlarge delivers ~298% more single-thread Sysbench score per dollar (1486 vs 5915 points per $1/hr). That's the cleanest signal we have for "which one runs your workload faster per dollar," but it only matters if your workload is single-thread-bound; for parallel workloads the multi-core scores (14654 vs 3605) are what to weigh. Spot pricing flips many of these comparisons — when c4.4xlarge drops to $0.2693/hr and c4.xlarge drops to $0.0599/hr, the cheap-per-hour winner can swing meaningfully.

In practice, pick c4.4xlarge when your workload is closer to compute-optimized (CPU-bound work — batch processing, web servers under sustained load, game servers). Pick c4.xlarge when it's closer to compute-optimized (CPU-bound work — batch processing, web servers under sustained load, game servers). When neither side is obviously right, the cheaper hourly rate usually wins for fault-tolerant batch workloads, while the higher single-core score usually wins for latency-sensitive web traffic. The regional pricing tables linked from each instance page below show where each is currently cheapest — sometimes a >20% regional gap flips the comparison entirely.