Comparing Amazon EC2 Pricing Models

The following table provides a brief comparison of On-demand, Reserved, and Spot pricing models:

On-Demand	Reserved	Spot
No upfront fee	Options: No upfront, partial upfront, or all upfront	No upfront fee
Charged by the hour or second	Charged by the hour or second	Charged by the hour or second
No commitment	1-year or 3-year commitment	No commitment
Ideal for short term needs or unpredictable workloads	Ideal for steady-state workloads and predictable usage	Ideal for cost-sensitive, compute-intensive use cases that can withstand interruption