AWS i3en.3xlargevsAWS i7ie.3xlarge

i3en.3xlarge pairs 12 vCPUs with 96GB of RAM at $1.3560/hr On-Demand (about $976/mo at 24×7). i7ie.3xlarge pairs 12 vCPUs with 96GB at $1.5594/hr (~$1123/mo). i3en.3xlarge is 15% cheaper per hour than i7ie.3xlarge ($0.2034/hr gap).

These are different generations of the same series. **i7ie.3xlarge** is the newer generation, and AWS's pattern across generations is fairly consistent: ~10–15% better single-thread, 15–30% better multi-core, and similar or modestly higher per-hour pricing — so the price/performance per dollar usually improves with each generation. **i3en.3xlarge** is still available and still works (AWS doesn't retire instance types quickly), but for new workloads the newer generation is typically the better default unless you have a specific reason to pin to the older AMI or there's a meaningful regional pricing advantage today.

On raw price-per-performance, the two are i7ie.3xlarge delivers ~124% more single-thread Sysbench score per dollar (806 vs 1808 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 (10075 vs 16980) are what to weigh. Spot pricing flips many of these comparisons — when i3en.3xlarge drops to $0.4716/hr and i7ie.3xlarge drops to $0.4410/hr, the cheap-per-hour winner can swing meaningfully.

In practice, pick i3en.3xlarge when your workload is closer to storage-optimized (NVMe SSD) (I/O-bound work needing low-latency NVMe local storage — NoSQL, search). Pick i7ie.3xlarge 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.