m5zn.3xlargeAWS Pricing, Specs & Benchmarks

The m5zn family is a generation-5 general-purpose line running on Intel Xeon (x86_64). m5zn.3xlarge provides 12 vCPUs and 48GB of RAM (a 1:4 vCPU-to-memory ratio), priced at $0.9910/hr On-Demand — about $713.52 per month at 24×7 utilization. In Sysbench CPU benchmarks it scores 1540 single-core and 14197 multi-core.

General-purpose instances are sized for application servers, mid-sized databases, caching fleets, and any workload where you want a balanced 1:4 vCPU-to-memory ratio without burstable credit accounting. If your workload doesn't match that profile — for example, if you're running a memory-bound app on a compute-optimized instance, or a CPU-pegged batch job on a burstable t-series — you'll likely pay for capacity you can't use or run into bottlenecks you didn't anticipate. The pages for sibling families (linked further down) cover those alternatives in detail.

In the AWS instance-naming convention, the digit after the series letter is the generation — higher is newer. This appears to be one of AWS's newer generations in the series, so for most fresh workloads it's a reasonable default within its category. The family suffix tells you about hardware variants: "n" = enhanced networking (typically 25–100 Gbps depending on size); "z" = highest single-thread frequency in the family.

Pricing varies by region (sometimes meaningfully — the gap between the cheapest and most expensive AWS region for the same SKU is often 15–30%). The regional pricing table further down shows where m5zn.3xlarge is cheapest today, both On-Demand and Spot. Spot pricing for m5zn.3xlarge is currently $0.3893/hr — roughly 61% off On-Demand — which makes the instance viable for fault-tolerant batch jobs, CI fleets, and any workload that can tolerate interruption with short notice.