r8g.12xlargeAWS Pricing, Specs & Benchmarks

The r8g family is a generation-8 memory-optimized line running on AWS Graviton (ARM64) — AWS-designed processors built for price/performance. r8g.12xlarge provides 48 vCPUs and 384GB of RAM (a 1:8 vCPU-to-memory ratio), priced at $2.8277/hr On-Demand — about $2035.93 per month at 24×7 utilization.

Memory-optimized instances are sized for in-memory databases (Redis, Memcached), real-time analytics, large caches, and any workload whose working set wants to fit in RAM. 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.

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 r8g.12xlarge is cheapest today, both On-Demand and Spot. Spot pricing for r8g.12xlarge is currently $0.7912/hr — roughly 72% 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.