AWS c5.xlargevsAWS c5a.xlarge

c5.xlarge pairs 4 vCPUs with 8GB of RAM at $0.1700/hr On-Demand (about $122/mo at 24×7). c5a.xlarge pairs 4 vCPUs with 8GB at $0.1540/hr (~$111/mo). c5a.xlarge is 9% cheaper per hour than c5.xlarge ($0.0160/hr gap).

Both are generation-5 compute-optimized instances, but they run on different silicon: **c5.xlarge** is Intel Xeon (x86_64), **c5a.xlarge** is AMD EPYC (x86_64). AMD variants (suffix `a`) are typically 10% cheaper than Intel siblings at comparable single-thread performance. Graviton variants (suffix `g`) are usually 20–40% cheaper but require ARM64-compatible binaries — most modern Linux stacks are fine, but verify any compiled extensions, native modules, or third-party binaries before migrating. Same vCPU/RAM ratio, same network performance class, different processor.

On raw price-per-performance, the two are c5a.xlarge delivers ~54% more single-thread Sysbench score per dollar (6812 vs 10513 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 (3463 vs 3408) are what to weigh. Spot pricing flips many of these comparisons — when c5.xlarge drops to $0.0754/hr and c5a.xlarge drops to $0.0604/hr, the cheap-per-hour winner can swing meaningfully.

In practice, pick c5.xlarge when your workload is closer to compute-optimized (CPU-bound work — batch processing, web servers under sustained load, game servers). Pick c5a.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.