AWS r5ad.largevsAWS r5dn.large

r5ad.large pairs 2 vCPUs with 16GB of RAM at $0.1310/hr On-Demand (about $94/mo at 24×7). r5dn.large pairs 2 vCPUs with 16GB at $0.1670/hr (~$120/mo). r5ad.large is 27% cheaper per hour than r5dn.large ($0.0360/hr gap).

Both are generation-5 memory-optimized instances, but they run on different silicon: **r5ad.large** is AMD EPYC (x86_64), **r5dn.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 r5ad.large delivers ~37% more single-thread Sysbench score per dollar (9580 vs 7000 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 (1295 vs 1752) are what to weigh. Spot pricing flips many of these comparisons — when r5ad.large drops to $0.0460/hr and r5dn.large drops to $0.0469/hr, the cheap-per-hour winner can swing meaningfully.

In practice, pick r5ad.large when your workload is closer to memory-optimized (memory-bound work — in-memory databases, real-time analytics, large caches). Pick r5dn.large when it's closer to memory-optimized (memory-bound work — in-memory databases, real-time analytics, large caches). 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.