[mirochnik]

> They are showing no difference between on demand and reserved pricing, with reserved pricing often even being more expensive.

That's exactly what is happening when you look at things without depreciation. You pay 3y all upfront. And it's a lot of money: a high step on the graph. On demand will grow steadily and in three years, it will surely be higher than 3y reserved instance. But we are not comparing one instance. We add more ever more powerful servers as they are added in any infrastructure. And we pay upfront. On demand price can't catch up to those all upfront costs on our period of time.

To see it clearly, we fix the infra on the 4th graph. And then on-demand becomes much more expensive. Also, you may look at the last paragraph in the Appendix to see why 3y all upfront is not horizontal between the steps.

> Are they actually taking the full 3-year up-front cost and comparing it to monthly on-demand pricing?

Yep.