AWS prices in Australia compared

With the new Amazon Web Services region opened in Australia there were some comments on Twitter and even articles about higher prices than US. While apparently Australia is struggling with high services prices, the launch of the AWS region should be looked in a slightly wider context than comparison to US.

While prices in Australia are higher than US, it is somewhere in the middle for international AWS prices. EC2 and EBS prices are at the same level as Europe and Singapore, while Japan and Brazil and even US West (California) are more expensive. Transfer starts to be cheaper in Singapore only above 10TB, though here both US and EU are cheaper. S3 storage cost is at the level of US West (California), where only Brazil is more expensive. Overall Australian AWS prices are still in the middle of international AWS regions, while definitely not at the US East level.

But what is probably more important is how AWS compares to other cloud providers in Australia. Australia unfortunately does not have a huge number cloud providers available. By far the most known Australian provider is Ninefold, but there also others available –  OpSource and VPS.NET has their international locations in Australia. There are also other local providers available, like OrionVM or CloudPeople. Unfortunately the last two are not yet supported by Cloudorado, so I’ll focus on current four.

To check how does AWS compare, we will make some sample configurations to check how they compare between providers.

Note: all prices in US dollars.

1.    Standard Small
The first shot for equivalent of Standard Small, which is 1.7 GB RAM and 1 ECU CPU. As in most cases persistence storage is used, we will take 50 GB EBS storage (I/O won’t be estimated here). In such case AWS in fact provides the best option offer. (link to calculation)

2.    Standard Small with twice the CPU
According to our benchmarks, it looks like competition gives stronger CPUs for similar size. The second test assumes twice the CPU power from the first test, with rest or parameters unchanged. Surprisingly – AWS from the lead position goes to the third, with Ninefold and OpSource at virtually the same level. (link to calculation)

3.    Standard Small with 2 TB traffic
The last test assumes again Standard Small equivalent, but this time with a lot of traffic – 2 TB. This time VPS.NET has the price of less than half of AWS price. (link to calculation)

It must be said that the prices of AWS in Australia are in general very competitive. When you play around, AWS is often at the top of the list. It is much, much more often than for other regions. But in all regions the same is true – when considering cloud provider, you should carefully compare cloud computing providers. Depending on your specific requirements like resource ratio, transfer or acceptable commitment duration completely different provider might be best choice. Cloudorado make it very easy to perform such individual comparisons.