Amazon EC2: Announcing New and Simplified Reserved Instance Payment Options

Today, we are simplifying our RI model by consolidating Reserved Instances (RIs) into one RI type while introducing two new payment options.

We have a new 1 year, No Upfront payment option that does not require an upfront payment and provides a substantial discount (typically about 30%) compared to On-Demand. We are also introducing a new All Upfront payment option where you pay for the entire RI term with one upfront payment and benefit from the best discount (typically about 63% for a 3 year term) compared to On-Demand. We continue to provide a payment option that balances the payments of an RI between upfront and hourly and this is now called the Partial Upfront payment option. This option provides a high discount (typically about 60% for a 3 year term) compared to On-Demand. Collectively, these RI payment options provide you with different ways to pay for the hours in the RI term.

All RIs continue to provide you with a capacity reservation, so that you can have confidence that you will be able to launch the instances you have reserved when you need them. If you already own RIs, the availability of these new payment options will not affect any RIs that you have already purchased. All of these new RI options are available for purchase starting today.

For more information on these new cost saving options, please visit http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing.