AWS r7g.metalvsAWS r7gd.12xlarge

r7g.metal pairs 64 vCPUs with 512GB of RAM at $3.4272/hr On-Demand (about $2468/mo at 24×7). r7gd.12xlarge pairs 48 vCPUs with 384GB at $3.2659/hr (~$2351/mo). r7gd.12xlarge is 5% cheaper per hour than r7g.metal ($0.1613/hr gap).

Both are generation-7 memory-optimized instances, but they run on different silicon: **r7g.metal** is AWS Graviton (ARM64), **r7gd.12xlarge** is AWS Graviton (ARM64). 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 r7gd.12xlarge delivers ~5% more single-thread Sysbench score per dollar (882 vs 923 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 (192837 vs 144335) are what to weigh. Spot pricing flips many of these comparisons — when r7g.metal drops to $0.9211/hr and r7gd.12xlarge drops to $0.9494/hr, the cheap-per-hour winner can swing meaningfully.

In practice, pick r7g.metal when your workload is closer to memory-optimized (memory-bound work — in-memory databases, real-time analytics, large caches). Pick r7gd.12xlarge 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.