t2.mediumAWS Pricing, Specs & Benchmarks

The t2 family is the original burstable line — launched in 2014 on Intel Xeon E5-2676 v3 (Haswell) cores, since superseded by t3, t3a, and t4g. It still has a real place in the AWS catalog for two reasons: **t2.micro** is the perpetual AWS Free Tier instance (750 hours/month for 12 months), and t2 instances are available in nearly every region including older ones where t3 may not be. t2.medium at $0.0464/hr On-Demand reflects pricing on this earlier-generation silicon.

Compared to t3, t2 has a lower CPU baseline, no NVMe networking, and meaningfully worse single-thread performance per dollar. AWS itself recommends migrating t2 workloads to t3, and for most new workloads that's the right call — t3.micro is roughly the same price as t2.micro and noticeably faster. The exceptions: free-tier consumers who specifically need t2.micro, regions where t3 isn't offered, and any AMI / configuration pinned to t2 that you don't want to re-test on newer hardware. Outside those cases, the value proposition for t2 has eroded over the years.

Burstable mechanics are the same as on t3: a CPU baseline you can sit at indefinitely, plus credits earned during idle periods that you can spend on bursts to full vCPU. The difference is the baseline is lower (e.g., t2.large baseline is 60% of a vCPU vs t3.large's 60% baseline, with t3's actual cores being substantially faster) and the credit cap is smaller. If a workload is mostly idle with occasional spikes, t2 still works; if it's near the baseline most of the day, you'll burn credits faster than you earn them and either get throttled or pay Unlimited Mode surcharges.

t2.medium provides 2 vCPUs and 4GB of RAM. Spot is $0.0151/hr (~67% off On-Demand), though spot capacity for t2 has narrowed as workloads migrate away — interruption rates can be higher in some regions than equivalent t3 spot. If you're spinning up a new workload, run a quick price-and-perf check against the matching t3 or t3a size before committing to t2 — you'll almost always come out ahead on the newer family.