Fargate vs EC2 Pricing Calculator - Compare ECS Container Costs

Compare the costs of running tasks between AWS Fargate and Amazon EC2 launch types for Amazon ECS. Find the most cost-effective option for your container workloads with side-by-side pricing, instance recommendations, and savings analysis.

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Frequently Asked Questions

How does this Fargate vs EC2 comparison work?

The calculator compares AWS Fargate (serverless containers) against EC2 with the ECS launch type for your specific workload configuration. For EC2, I automatically find the most cost-effective instance type that can fit your tasks while minimizing wasted capacity.

The comparison accounts for task density (how many of your tasks fit per EC2 instance) and calculates the total instances needed. Both options use the same pricing model you select, so you get an apples-to-apples comparison.

What Savings Plans does this calculator support?

This calculator supports Compute Savings Plans with 1-year and 3-year commitment terms. These plans apply to both Fargate and EC2, making them ideal for comparing ECS launch types.

Fargate: Compute Savings Plans offer approximately 20% savings (1-year) or 52% savings (3-year) on vCPU and memory costs.

EC2: Compute Savings Plans provide similar discounts and offer flexibility to change instance families, sizes, or regions without losing your commitment discount.

Note: EC2 Reserved Instances are not included since they don't apply to Fargate. Compute Savings Plans give you consistent discounts across both launch types.

When should I use Fargate vs EC2?

Choose Fargate when you want zero infrastructure management, have variable or unpredictable workloads, need rapid scaling, or prefer paying only for the exact resources your tasks consume.

Choose EC2 (Managed Instances) when you need EC2 economics with managed operations. AWS handles provisioning, scaling, and patching while you get EC2 pricing plus a small management fee.

For a complete cost comparison including Total Cost of Ownership considerations, see our Amazon ECS pricing guide.

How does Spot pricing work for ECS?

Both Fargate and EC2 support Spot capacity at up to 70% off On-Demand prices. Spot tasks can be interrupted with 2 minutes notice when AWS needs the capacity back.

Best for: Fault-tolerant workloads, batch processing, CI/CD runners, and any stateless services that can handle interruptions gracefully. Not recommended for user-facing production services that require high availability.

How does the calculator choose EC2 instance types?

The calculator finds the cheapest EC2 instance that fits your task requirements (vCPU and memory) while maximizing task density. It considers all general-purpose and compute-optimized instance families and calculates how many tasks fit per instance to minimize wasted capacity.

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