compute
17 articles on compute — what drives the cost, how it is priced, and where the savings actually are.
Bare metal vs cloud VM cost: when dedicated hardware beats virtual machines
Bare-metal servers give you a whole physical machine with no hypervisor overhead; cloud VMs slice physical hosts into virtual instances. For steady, resource-hungry workloads bare metal can be cheaper per unit, but VMs win on flexibility. Here is the comparison with numbers.
Scale up vs scale out cost: fewer big instances or many small ones?
Scaling up means fewer, larger instances; scaling out means many smaller ones. The per-vCPU price is often similar, but overhead, granularity, and resilience differ enough to change the total. Here is when each is cheaper, with numbers.
Serverless vs VMs cost crossover: when functions get more expensive than a server
Serverless functions cost nothing when idle and scale to zero, but their per-request price is high; a VM costs a flat hourly rate no matter the load. There is a clear crossover in request volume where a VM becomes cheaper. Here is how to find it.
EC2 burstable instances (T-family): cheap until you burst
T-family burstable instances (t3, t4g) are the cheapest EC2 option for low-average-CPU workloads, using a CPU credit system. Understand credits and unlimited mode or you will get throttled or hit with surprise charges. Here is how they cost out.
EC2 Dedicated Hosts vs instances: when isolation is worth the cost
Dedicated Hosts give you a whole physical server, needed for BYOL licensing and hard isolation, but priced per host regardless of how full it is. Regular instances (and dedicated instances) are cheaper for almost everything else. Here is the cost tradeoff.
EC2 instance families explained: matching workload to hardware
EC2 offers dozens of instance families (general purpose, compute, memory, storage, and accelerated) each tuned to a resource profile. Picking the right family for your workload is the first and biggest cost lever. Here is how they map.
EC2 pricing explained: how the per-hour rate is built
An EC2 instance's price combines family and size, region, purchase model (on-demand, Spot, or commitment), operating system licensing, and attached resources. Understanding each component is how you control the largest line on most AWS bills. Here is the full breakdown.
Self-hosted runners cost savings: cheaper CI at scale
Hosted CI runners are billed per minute and get expensive at high build volume; self-hosted runners on your own compute can cost far less per minute but add operational and idle-capacity overhead. Here is the tradeoff.
AWS Batch cost: free service, you pay for the compute it runs
AWS Batch adds no charge of its own; you pay for the EC2, Fargate, or Spot compute your jobs run on. Compute environment choice and Spot are the big levers. Here is how to run batch workloads cheaply.
Azure VM Scale Sets cost: you pay for the VMs, autoscaling sets how many
Scale Sets add no charge of their own; you pay for the underlying VMs, disks, and load balancer. Autoscaling rules, instance size, and Spot instances decide the bill. Here is how to tune them for cost without hurting performance.
Spot instance cost strategy: big discounts for interruptible work
Spot instances (spare capacity at up to 90% off) can be reclaimed with little notice, so they suit fault-tolerant, interruptible, or checkpointed work. Diversifying pools and handling interruption make them safe. Here is the strategy.
Azure Machine Learning cost: compute is the bill, not the workspace
Azure ML's workspace is low-cost; the bill is the compute it runs, training clusters, compute instances, and managed online endpoints, plus associated storage. Idle compute instances and always-on endpoints are the classic waste. Here is the model.
GCP Batch cost: free service, you pay for the compute it schedules
GCP Batch adds no charge of its own; you pay for the Compute Engine VMs it runs your jobs on, including Spot. Spot workers, right-sized machines, and jobs that scale to zero are the levers. Here is how to run batch cheaply.
AWS Elastic Beanstalk cost: the service is free, the resources are not
Elastic Beanstalk adds no charge of its own. You pay for the EC2, load balancer, RDS, and storage it provisions. That means every EC2 cost lever applies, and the environment type quietly decides the bill. Here is what to watch.
Azure Spot VMs: when 90% off is worth the eviction risk
Azure Spot VMs run up to ~90% below pay-as-you-go, evictable with 30 seconds' notice. Here's the eviction model, what workloads fit, AKS Spot pools, and how to design for interruption.
Azure App Service Plan tiers cost: you pay for the plan, not the app
App Service Plans bill per instance-hour by tier (B1 ~$13, S1 ~$70, P1v3 ~$120+/mo) times instances. Apps share a plan for free. Here's how to pick the tier and why consolidating apps is the big saving.
GCP Spot VMs: 60-91% off if you design for preemption
Spot VMs run 60-91% below on-demand for the same machine type, preemptible at any time. Here's what belongs on Spot, how it differs from preemptible, Spot GKE pools, and how to design for preemption.