AWS i3.metalvsAWS i3en.6xlarge

i3.metal pairs 64 vCPUs with 488GB of RAM at $4.9920/hr On-Demand (about $3594/mo at 24×7). i3en.6xlarge pairs 24 vCPUs with 192GB at $2.7120/hr (~$1953/mo). i3en.6xlarge is 46% cheaper per hour than i3.metal ($2.2800/hr gap).

Both are generation-3 storage-optimized (NVMe SSD) instances, but they run on different silicon: **i3.metal** is Intel Xeon (x86_64), **i3en.6xlarge** is Intel Xeon (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.

Benchmark data for at least one of these instances is still being collected, so a direct performance-per-dollar comparison isn't possible yet. Sysbench scores are pending for i3.metal and 1093/20250 for i3en.6xlarge. Check back as the benchmark queue completes — newer-generation instances typically score 10–30% higher on single-thread and 15–50% higher on multi-core vs the previous generation in the same series.

In practice, pick i3.metal when your workload is closer to storage-optimized (NVMe SSD) (I/O-bound work needing low-latency NVMe local storage — NoSQL, search). Pick i3en.6xlarge when it's closer to storage-optimized (NVMe SSD) (I/O-bound work needing low-latency NVMe local storage — NoSQL, search). 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.