AWS m8azn.3xlargevsAWS m8azn.xlarge

m8azn.3xlarge pairs 12 vCPUs with 48GB of RAM at $1.2388/hr On-Demand (about $892/mo at 24×7). m8azn.xlarge pairs 4 vCPUs with 16GB at $0.4129/hr (~$297/mo). m8azn.xlarge is 67% cheaper per hour than m8azn.3xlarge ($0.8258/hr gap).

Because both instances are in the **m8azn family**, the only thing that changes between them is sizing — same silicon, same architecture (AMD EPYC (x86_64)), same burstable/sustained behavior. The choice is purely about how much capacity you actually need: m8azn.3xlarge gives you 12 vCPUs and 48GB of RAM, m8azn.xlarge gives you 4 vCPUs and 16GB. 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 m8azn.xlarge delivers ~201% more single-thread Sysbench score per dollar (5006 vs 15085 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 (74658 vs 24953) are what to weigh. Spot pricing flips many of these comparisons — when m8azn.3xlarge drops to $0.4496/hr and m8azn.xlarge drops to $0.1389/hr, the cheap-per-hour winner can swing meaningfully.

In practice, pick m8azn.3xlarge when your workload is closer to general-purpose (balanced general-purpose workloads with a 1:4 vCPU-to-memory ratio). Pick m8azn.xlarge when it's closer to general-purpose (balanced general-purpose workloads with a 1:4 vCPU-to-memory ratio). 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.