Cloud Service Providers
Cloud Computing Services: Free Trials and Price Tiers
In many cases, cloud services such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Microsft Azure offer extremely customizable and flexible environments that may better suit the resource needs of particular applications. These service providers often have promotional credits, free tiers and academic accounts available to get familiar with and test your application in their respective computing environments.
Most cloud providers offer 3 major price tiers:
"on-demand" - standard rates (aka "pay-as-you-go")
"reserved pricing" - contract pricing (pay more upfront, usually 1 or 3 year commitments, better overall rate)
"spot pricing" - heavily discounted rate for flexible, interruptible jobs (refer to below for details)
IMPORTANT:
If you exceed your free tier service limits, use up your free credits, or your free tier expires, you will be charged at pay-as-you-go rates.
Remember to always stop, turn off, or delete your virtual server Instances and other services after usage (and even between uses) to ensure you will not be charged continuously. Generally, a credit card or bank account is required to register for a free trial (excluding some academic/student accounts). Leaving virtual servers provisioned but off will encounter ongoing storage charges.
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a web service that provides secure, resizable compute capacity in the cloud. There are multiple tiers for getting started that vary in performance and pricing. All service offerings can be billed at a per second rate, to ensure that users are only billed for the time that resources are actually being used.
Free Tier - includes 750 hours/per month of Linux and Windows t2.micro instances for one year (To stay within the Free Tier, use only EC2 Micro instances). Additional services (i.e. storage, databases, machine learning, analytics) are also available (with limits) under the Free Tier.
With the increasing demand for cloud employees, AWS Educate provides an academic gateway for the next generation of IT and cloud professionals. AWS Educate is Amazon’s global initiative to provide students and educators with the resources needed to accelerate cloud-related learning. All AWS Educate accounts have free access to their labs and training courses. Learn more.
Students - AWS Educate Starter Account:
$100 in AWS Promotional Credit per student at member institutions ($30 at non-member institutions)
$200 in AWS Promotional Credit per educator – at member institutions ($75 at non-member institutions)
Other Payment Options
On-Demand Pricing - pay for compute capacity by the hour or the second depending on which instances you run. No longer-term commitments or upfront payments are needed. You can increase or decrease your compute capacity depending on the demands of your application and only pay the specified per hourly rates for the instance you use. Pricing can vary by the region and operating system/environment selected.
Recommended uses:
Users that prefer the low cost and flexibility of Amazon EC2 without any up-front payment or long-term commitment
Applications with short-term, spiky, or unpredictable workloads that cannot be interrupted
Applications being developed or tested on Amazon EC2 for the first time
Reserved Instance Pricing - provides you with a significant discount (up to 75%) compared to On-Demand instance pricing. In addition, when Reserved Instances are assigned to a specific Availability Zone, they provide a capacity reservation, giving you additional confidence in your ability to launch instances when you need them. For applications that have steady state or predictable usage, Reserved Instances can provide significant savings compared to using On-Demand instances. Refer to How to Purchase Reserved Instances for more information.
Recommended uses:
Applications with steady state usage
Applications that may require reserved capacity
Customers that can commit to using EC2 over a 1 or 3 year term to reduce their total computing costs
Spot Pricing - Spot instances allow you to request spare Amazon EC2 computing capacity for up to 90% off the On-Demand price. Applications that are fault-tolerant, stateless, or utilize big data might be good candidates as Amazon may boot you off (repossess) these resources with only a moments notice. Learn More.
Recommended uses:
Applications that have flexible start and end times
Applications that are only feasible at very low compute prices
Users with urgent computing needs for large amounts of additional capacity
NOTE: Pricing can also change based on the region selected. Newer regions may have significantly lower pricing because of lower utilization.
In some cases (for specific job types), an EC2 region (where the data is being processed) that is geographically closer to where the data is being stored (i.e. Amazon S3) may provide better performance and ultimately result in cost savings. This is not always the case.
Google Compute Platform (GCP)
GCP's Compute Engine delivers virtual machines running in Google's innovative data centers and worldwide fiber network. Compute Engine's tooling and workflow support enable scaling from single instances to global, load-balanced cloud computing.
Compute Engine's VMs boot quickly, come with persistent disk storage, and deliver consistent performance. Our virtual servers are available in many configurations, including predefined sizes or the option to create custom machine types optimized for your specific needs. Flexible pricing and automatic sustained-use discounts make Compute Engine the leader in price/performance.
Free Tier - gives you free resources to learn about Google Cloud services by trying them on your own. The Google Cloud Platform Free Tier offers you free usage of one f1-micro VM instance per month from North America, excluding Northern Virginia. This includes 30 GB of standard persistent disk storage per month and 5 GB of snapshot storage per month.
Includes:
A 12-month free trial with $300 credit to use with any Google Cloud services.
"Always Free", which provides limited access to many common Google Cloud resources (i.e App Engine, BigQuery, ML APIs, Kubernetes, etc), free of charge.
On-Demand Pricing - Once your free trial is over, you will be billed only for the resources you continue to use. Pricing for Compute Engine is based on per-second usage. To learn more visit the Compute Engine pricing page. To get an estimate of your bill, please refer to our pricing calculator.
Google offers a range of educational discounts and credits for students and faculty members. Learn more about the different credit opportunities for teaching, research projects and cloud training.
Discounted Rates
GCP also offers a variety of products at a discounted rate when certain requirements are met, such as the "sustained-use discount" and "committed-use discount" (aka "reserved pricing"). It is a good idea to make yourself aware of the current special rates available to ensure you are getting the best value for your resource usage. Most discounts are applied automatically if your usage meets the discount requirements.
Pre-emptible VM Instances - similar to AWS Spot Pricing, Google offers "preemptible VM instances" at a discounted rate. This means if Google needs the resources, your instances are relinquished and running jobs are terminated. For certain jobs, this may not be acceptable, as it will not automatically pause and resume jobs that are interrupted. However, this can be a great option for jobs that require lots of resources for a limited amount of time or non-urgent jobs (that don't have an nearing deadline).
Always check the pricing in different regions and zones, as underutilized locations (often newly added) may have significant cost benefits.
Microsoft Azure
Azure Virtual Machines gives you the flexibility of virtualization for a wide range of computing solutions with support for Linux, Windows Server, SQL Server, Oracle, IBM, SAP, and more. All current generation Virtual Machines include load balancing and auto-scaling at no cost. For optimal performance, we recommend pairing your Virtual Machines with Managed Disks. Standard egress charges apply. Combine any of the VM payment options with the Azure Hybrid Benefit for additional savings.
Refer to the Virtual Machine Pricing page for more detailed information.
Free-Tier - Azure offers 12 months of limited use services (i.e. 750 compute hours per month) as well as a $200 credit for the first 30 days to use on any of their services that are beyond the free tier. Learn more.
Azure offers a free $100 credit for new student users. This is a great way to get acquainted with their services and test your research jobs on cloud systems. No credit card required. Learn more.
Other Payment Options
Pay as you go (On-Demand) - Pay for compute capacity by the second, with no long-term commitment or upfront payments. Increase or decrease compute capacity on demand. Start or stop at any time and only pay for what you use. Learn more.
Recommended for:
Users who prefer the low cost and flexibility of Azure Virtual Machines.
Applications with short-term, spiky, or unpredictable workloads that cannot be interrupted.
Applications being developed or tested on Azure Virtual Machines for the first time.
Reserved VM Instances - advanced purchase of a Virtual Machine for one or three years in a specified region. The commitment is made up front, and in return, you get up to 72 percent price savings compared to pay-as-you-go pricing. Reserved Virtual Machine Instances are flexible and can easily be exchanged or returned. Learn more.
Recommended for:
Applications with steady-state usage.
Customers who want budget predictability.
Customers who can commit to using a virtual machine (VM) over a one-year or three-year term to reduce computing costs.
Spot Pricing - Purchase unused compute capacity at deep discounts – up to 90 percent compared to pay as you go prices.* If your workload can tolerate interruptions, and its execution time is flexible, then using spot VMs can significantly reduce the cost of running your workload in Azure. Run your workloads on Virtual Machines or Virtual Machine Scale Sets. Learn more.
* The maximum discounts will be available when variable pricing becomes effective. Actual discounts may vary based on region, VM type, and Azure compute capacity available when the workload is deployed.
Recommended for:
Customers who want to significantly lower their costs.
Interruptible applications. You can receive a notification 30 seconds in advance before your application is evicted.
Workloads that do not require completion within a predetermined timeframe or an SLA.