AWS cuts in half the price of most of its Lightsail virtual private servers

AWS Lightsail, which launched in 2016, is Amazon’s answer to the rise of Digital Ocean, OVH and other affordable virtual private server (VPS) players. Lightsail started as a pretty basic service, but over the course of the last two years, AWS added features like block storage, Windows support and additional regions.

Today, the company announced it is launching two new instance sizes and cutting in half the price of most Linux-based Lightsail instances. Windows instances are also getting cheaper, though the price cut there is closer to 30 percent for most instances.

The only Linux instance that isn’t getting a full 50 percent cut is the $5/month 512 MB instance, which will now cost $3.50. That’s not too bad, either. Depending on your needs, 512 MB can be enough to run a few projects, so if you don’t need a full 1 GB, you can save a few dollars by going with Lightsail over Digital Ocean’s smallest $5/month 1 GB instance. Indeed, it’s probably no surprise that Lightsail’s 1 GB instance now also costs $5/month.

All instance types come with attached SSD storage, SSH access, a static IP address and all of the other features you’d expect from a VPS hosting service.

As usual, Windows instances cost a bit more (those Windows licenses aren’t free, after all) and now start at $8 per month for a 512 MB instances. The more usable 1 GB instance will set you back $12 per month.

As for the new instance sizes, the new 16 GB instance will feature 4 vCPUs, 320 GB of storage and a generous 6 TB of data transfer. The 32 GB instance doubles the vCPU and storage numbers and offers 7 TB of data transfer.