[timmclean]

FWIW, spot prices for c5a.24xlarge in us-east-2b and us-east-2c seem to have been under $0.92/hr for most of the last 3 months. So, assuming some flexibility on the choice of region, that would adjust your estimate to $0.92 / $1.69 * $1233.70/mo = $671.60/mo, which looks a lot more reasonable. Hopefully I did that math right. Data egress prices are definitely still ridiculous, I agree.

[lebovic]

True! It sometimes drops even more, which definitely makes spot instances attractive. The r5.16xlarges had a ~80% discount and a <5% termination rate for while.

Also, if all of scientific computing switched to AWS in order to exploit spot instance pricing, I don't think those market dynamics would stay the same.

As an aside, I've had trouble created large clusters of high memory instances in us-east-2. They might have increased capacity recently, though.