AWS i4g.largevsAWS i4i.large

i4g.large pairs 2 vCPUs with 16GB of RAM at $0.1544/hr On-Demand (about $111/mo at 24×7). i4i.large pairs 2 vCPUs with 16GB at $0.1720/hr (~$124/mo). i4g.large is 11% cheaper per hour than i4i.large ($0.0176/hr gap).

Both are generation-4 storage-optimized (NVMe SSD) instances, but they run on different silicon: **i4g.large** is AWS Graviton (ARM64), **i4i.large** 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.

On raw price-per-performance, the two are i4g.large delivers ~6% more single-thread Sysbench score per dollar (18175 vs 17215 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 (5305 vs 3066) are what to weigh. Spot pricing flips many of these comparisons — when i4g.large drops to $0.0412/hr and i4i.large drops to $0.0368/hr, the cheap-per-hour winner can swing meaningfully.

In practice, pick i4g.large when your workload is closer to storage-optimized (NVMe SSD) (I/O-bound work needing low-latency NVMe local storage — NoSQL, search). Pick i4i.large 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.