Compute Comparison
Edge vs AWS EC2
A detailed comparison of Edge Compute and Amazon EC2 for cloud virtual machines.
How we compare to AWS EC2
AWS EC2 is the industry default, with unmatched breadth: hundreds of instance types, every conceivable integration, and deep enterprise tooling. If your architecture depends on the wider AWS ecosystem — RDS, Lambda, SQS, IAM — EC2 is the natural home for your compute.
That breadth comes at a cost: pricing complexity, separate charges for storage and bandwidth, and bills that are hard to predict. Edge Compute has three published per-resource rates — vCPU, RAM, and NVMe disk — billed hourly from a prepaid balance, with zero egress fees and no separate storage line items.
For teams running VMs, object storage, DNS, and a CDN, Edge Compute delivers the essentials at a fraction of the cost and complexity. See the compute docs to get started.
Key Differences
-
Three published rates – vCPU, RAM, disk — no instance-type matrix -
Zero egress fees – EC2 charges $0.09/GB to serve your users -
Prepaid billing – A surprise bill is impossible by design -
Free signup, no card – Deploy without an enterprise procurement process
Feature Comparison
How Edge and AWS EC2 compare feature by feature.
| Feature |
Edge
| AWS EC2 |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing Model | Per resource | 750+ instance types |
| Custom vCPU / RAM / Disk | | |
| Egress Fees | Free | $0.09/GB |
| Billing | Hourly, prepaid | Per second, postpaid |
| Surprise Bills Possible | | |
| Storage Included | NVMe included | EBS billed separately |
| DDoS Protection | Included | Extra cost (Shield Advanced) |
| Deploy Time | <60s | 2-5 min |
| Pricing Complexity | 3 rates | Requires a calculator |
| GPU Instances | | |
| Decentralized | | |
| Sustainable by Design | | |
Price Comparison
Monthly pricing for comparable VM configurations. Edge prices are calculated from our published per-resource rates.
| VM Specs | Edge | AWS EC2 |
|---|---|---|
| 2 vCPU / 4 GB / 80 GB | $19.24 | ~$36 |
| 2 vCPU / 8 GB / 160 GB | $32.63 | ~$70 |
| 4 vCPU / 16 GB / 320 GB | $65.26 | ~$140 |
| 8 vCPU / 32 GB / 640 GB | $130.52 | ~$280 |
* AWS estimates based on comparable t3/m-family on-demand instances in us-east-1 plus gp3 EBS storage, as published at the time of writing. Excludes egress, which AWS bills separately at ~$0.09/GB. Prices vary by region — check AWS's current pricing.
When to Choose Edge
AWS has unmatched breadth. Here's when Edge makes more sense.
You serve real traffic
EC2 egress at $0.09/GB means 10 TB out costs around $900 on top of your instances. Edge includes transfer at no charge.
You want a bill you can predict
AWS bills arrive after the fact and famously surprise people. Edge Compute is prepaid — when your balance runs out, VMs stop and data is retained.
You don't need 200+ AWS services
If your workload is VMs, storage, DNS, and a CDN, Edge covers it without IAM policies, VPC wizards, or a pricing calculator.
Ready to try Edge?
Create a free account — no card required — and deploy your first VM in under a minute.