Savings Plans

Savings Plans is a flexible pricing model that offers significant savings (up to 72%) on AWS compute usage. This pricing model offers lower prices compared to On-Demand pricing, in exchange for a commitment to a specific amount of usage (measured in $/hour) for a one or three-year period.

Types of Savings Plans

Compute Savings Plans:
- Most Flexible.
- Applies to EC2, Fargate, and Lambda.
- Automatically applies regardless of Instance Family, Region, OS, or Tenancy.
- Example: You can switch from C5 to M5, or from US-East to EU-West, and still get the discount.
EC2 Instance Savings Plans:
- Lowest Price (Higher savings, less flexible).
- Applies to a specific instance family in a specific region.
- Example: You commit to M5 instances in N. Virginia. You can change size (m5.xlarge to m5.2xlarge) or OS (Windows to Linux), but you cannot switch families (to C5) or regions.
SageMaker Savings Plans:
- Applies to SageMaker usage.

Exam Tips

"Flexible": Keyword for Compute Savings Plans.
"Fargate / Lambda": Only Compute Savings Plans cover these (EC2 Instance Savings Plans do not).
"Commitment to $/hour": How Savings Plans work (vs Reserved Instances which are often specific capacity reservations).
Savings Plans vs Reserved Instances: Savings Plans are generally preferred now due to flexibility.

Common Use Cases

Consistent Workloads: For any workload running 24/7.
Modernization: Use Compute Savings Plans if you plan to migrate from EC2 to Fargate/Lambda during the term.