Amazon EC2
The platform every other one imitates, priced by the component: a t4g.medium in London is $27.45 a month before the $7.42 disk, the $3.65 public IPv4 and the $4.24 snapshot that make it a $42.76 server, then egress at $0.09 a gigabyte after the first hundred, support from $29 a month, a 99.99% regional SLA, a separate EU Sovereign Cloud since January 2026, and a Trustpilot of 1.3 for AWS as a whole.
How we testAmazon EC2 (Amazon Web Services, a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc.; UK and EU customers contract with Amazon Web Services EMEA SARL in Luxembourg) is not a VPS product and does not pretend to be. It is the compute layer of the largest cloud in the world: 39 regions and 124 availability zones, London plus Ireland, Frankfurt, Milan, Paris, Spain and Stockholm in Europe and Local Zones in Manchester, over a thousand instance types from burstable T-series to bare metal and GPUs, and every managed service a company could want (RDS, EKS, ELB, S3, VPC, Shield Standard DDoS protection at no charge, IAM with MFA and SSO). It holds ISO 27001, SOC 2 and C5 among many others; and since 14 January 2026 AWS has operated a separate European Sovereign Cloud from Brandenburg, run by EU residents in the EU, which a customer must choose deliberately: ordinary EC2 in London or Frankfurt is standard AWS under a US parent, and AWS makes no CLOUD Act statement about those regions.
Prices in US dollars, ex VAT, read from AWS's own pricing tools on 8 September 2026 for London (eu-west-2). A t4g.micro (2 vCPU ARM, 1 GiB) is $0.0094 an hour, about $6.86 a month; a t3.micro is $0.0118. The reference t4g.medium (2 vCPU, 4 GiB) is $0.0376 an hour, about $27.45 a month, and the x86 t3.medium $0.0472. Nothing else is included. An 80 GB gp3 disk is $0.0928 per GB-month, $7.42; every public IPv4 has cost $0.005 an hour since February 2024, $3.65; an EBS snapshot is $0.053 per GB-month, $4.24 for a first full copy of the disk. The real monthly cost of the reference server is therefore about $42.76 on demand, with no monthly cap and no bundled transfer: the first 100 GB of outbound traffic a month is free across the account, then it is $0.09 per GB for the first 10 TB, the highest overage rate here alongside Lightsail. Reserved instances and Savings Plans bring the compute down for a one- or three-year commitment. Amazon maintains its own AMIs (Amazon Linux 2023 among them), and the Marketplace carries third-party images, which is where the Bitnami story sits: Broadcom withdrew Bitnami AMIs from AWS Marketplace on 10 June 2026 and stopped updating them on 20 May 2026.
Support is the other line on the bill. Basic is free and covers account and billing questions only; Business Support+ starts at $29 a month or up to 9% of spend; Enterprise from $5,000. The SLA is 99.99% at region level and 99.5% for a single instance, with automatic credits for more than six minutes of downtime in an hour. Reviews measure two different populations: Trustpilot for aws.amazon.com is 1.3 on 420 reviews (75% one-star, phantom charges, tickets unanswered for weeks, account limitations with no one to call), while G2 rates EC2 4.6 on 1,200 reviews from professional users. For a team of ten running a few servers, EC2 costs more than any provider above it and asks more of you; it is here so you can see what the platform price is.
Not yet tested by Saaskly: assessed on published pricing, documentation and third-party reviews.
Pros
- +The deepest platform there is: 39 regions, London and six EU regions, every managed service, Shield DDoS protection included, a 99.99% regional SLA, ISO 27001, SOC 2 and C5
- +A separate European Sovereign Cloud run by EU residents since January 2026, for those who choose it
- +Amazon-maintained AMIs; official CLI, Terraform provider and MCP servers
Cons
- −Priced by the component: a $27.45 instance is a $42.76 server before egress at $0.09 a gigabyte, and there is no monthly cap
- −Support beyond billing questions starts at $29 a month or 9% of spend
- −Trustpilot 1.3 on 420 reviews for AWS as a whole; standard EU regions carry no CLOUD Act statement
Pricing
Minimum commitment: $6.86 ($6.86/mo × 1 seat × 1 month (no commitment)). The least you can spend before walking away; excludes numbers, minutes and add-ons.
t4g.micro (London)
$6.86/mo · no commitment
Same price on any term
- ✓2 vCPU (ARM) / 1 GiB, $0.0094/hr, EBS disk and public IPv4 extra, ex VAT, USD. t3.micro $0.0118/hr. Egress 100 GB/mo free then $0.09/GB. Free Tier: $200 credit for 6 months (since 15 Jul 2025).
t4g.medium (London)
$27.45/mo · no commitment
Same price on any term
- ✓2 vCPU (ARM) / 4 GiB, $0.0376/hr; t3.medium $0.0472/hr. Add 80 GB gp3 $7.42, public IPv4 $3.65, first snapshot $4.24. Real monthly cost: about $42.76, no monthly cap. Business Support+ from $29/mo.
Specifications
| Rating | 3.0 |
| Smallest instance | $6.86/mo (2 vCPU (ARM) / 1 GiB, disk extra (t4g.micro, London)) |
| Reference instance | $27.45/mo (2 vCPU (ARM) / 4 GiB, disk extra (t4g.medium, London)) |
| Real monthly cost* | $42.76/mo |
| Hourly billing | ✓ |
| Transfer included | 0.1 TB |
| Egress overage | $0.090/GB |
| Public IPv4 | $3.65/mo |
| Backups | EBS snapshots $0.053 per GB-month (London); AWS Backup at the same rate |
| UK location | ✓ |
| EU locations | 6 |
| Locations | 39 |
| Owned in** | US-owned |
| Sovereign offering | Dedicated sovereign cloud |
| Owner | Amazon.com, Inc. |
| Vendor-maintained images | ✓ |
| Managed databases | ✓ |
| Kubernetes | ✓ |
| Object storage | ✓ |
| API | ✓ |
| Terraform | ✓ |
| MCP server | ✓ |
| Uptime SLA (%) | 99.99 |
| Trustpilot (reviews) | 1.3 (420) |
| Snapshots (per GB/mo) | $0.053 |
| Free credit | $200 Free Tier credit for 6 months |
| UK cities | London (plus Manchester Local Zones) |
| HQ | US |
| Publicly listed | ✓ |
| ISO 27001 | ✓ |
| SOC 2 | ✓ |
| Block storage | ✓ |
| Load balancers | ✓ |
| Bare metal | ✓ |
| GPU instances | ✓ |
| ARM instances | ✓ |
| Image marketplace | ✓ |
| DDoS protection included | ✓ |
| Private networking | ✓ |
| CLI | ✓ |
| 2FA | ✓ |
| Phone support | No |
| Support channels | Basic (billing only), Business Support+ from $29/mo, Enterprise from $5,000/mo |
*Real monthly cost: the reference instance (the nearest to 2 vCPU / 4 GB / 80 GB) with automatic backups switched on and a public IPv4 address, per month at the monthly or capped-hourly rate, in the currency the vendor shows a UK visitor on the research date; see each profile for the VAT basis, the backup rule and the egress bill on top.
**Owned in: where the company that owns the provider answers to. A US-owned provider is subject to US law (including the CLOUD Act) wherever the data centre is; a local data centre is not the same thing as local jurisdiction. "Sovereign offering" records what the vendor offers beyond a local data centre.
Researched and drafted with AI assistance; reviewed and approved by Tim Meredith. How we use AI
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