AWS T2 Vs. T3 Instances: Side-By-Side Comparison

Amazon EC2 T2 and T3 instances are two of 14 General Purpose instance types available on Amazon Web Services (AWS). A General Purpose instance provides a balance of CPU, RAM, storage, and networking capabilities that suit a wide range of workloads.

Here’s a quick rundown of the differences between T2 and T3 instance types. We’ll also share a tool to help you choose the best AWS instance type for your workload, AWS service, region, budget, and more.

What Are Amazon EC2 T2 Instances?

T2 instances provide twice the compute power of standard instances. T2 instances also support Burstable mode, which enables them to operate above baseline performance under increased load. Activating Unlimited Mode enables you to run this high CPU performance state for as long as your workload requires. 

AWS assigns CPU credits to T2 instances that run at or below baseline performance (20%). The number of CPU credits increases with the size of the instance (larger instances accumulate more CPU credits) and as long as the T2 instances are running (even if idle).

What Are Amazon EC2 T3 Instances?

Amazon EC2 T3 instances are also burstable and deliver a balance of compute, RAM, storage, and networking power. But unlike T2, a T3 instance has Unlimited Burstable mode enabled automatically. The comparison table below describes other ways in which T3 instances differ from T2 instances.

What are Amazon T3a instances?

EC2 T3a instances share the same features as T3 instances, except that they are 10% cheaper and have lower processing power. A T3 instance is powered by 3.1 GHz Intel Xeon Scalable processors from the Skylake 8175M or Cascade Lake 8259CL series. In contrast, a T3a instance uses an AMD EPYC 7571 processor with a 2.5 GHz all core turbo clock speed.

T2 Vs. T3 Instances: Side-By-Side Comparison Table

	T2 Instance	T3 Instance
Supported processors	3.1 GHz (Skylake 8175M or Cascade Lake 8259CL) Intel Xeon Scalable processors	3.3 GHz (Haswell E5-2676 v3 or Broadwell E5-2686 v4) Intel Xeon Scalable processor
Number of Cores	2 cores per instance	4 cores per instance
Maximum Memory	1.2 GiB	3.6 GiB
Maximum Storage	2 terabytes	8 Terabytes
Instance sizes	t2.nano (1 vCPU and 0.5 GiB memory) t2.micro (1 vCPU and 1 GiB memory) t2.small (1 vCPU and 2 GiB memory) t2.medium (2 vCPU and 4 GiB memory)  t2.large (2 vCPU and 8 GiB memory) t2.xlarge (4 vCPU and 16 GiB memory) t2.2xlarge (8 vCPU and 32 GiB memory)	t3.nano (2 vCPU and 0.5 GiB memory) t3.micro (2 vCPU and 1 GiB memory)  t3.small (2 vCPU and 2 GiB memory) t3.medium (2 vCPU and 4 GiB memory)  t3.large (2 vCPU and 8 GiB memory)  t3.xlarge (4 vCPU and 16 GiB memory)  t3.2xlarge (8 vCPU and 32 GiB memory)
Burstable Mode	Standard Mode enabled by default	Unlimited Mode enabled by default, which
Baseline vCPU performance	20%	30%
CPU Credits system	Limits CPU and networking performance to baseline after credits have run out, bursting again only after accumulating additional credits .	Continues to perform at full CPU power in Unlimited Mode — accruing at least 144 credits more at no extra charge*, and charges $0.05 per vCPU hour (Linux, RHEL, SUSE) and $0.96 per vCPU hour (Windows) after that. *Instances have to pay down the owed CPU credits by running at or below baseline  within the next 24 consecutive hours — or you’ll be charged for them at $0.05 per vCPU hour or $0.096 per vCPU hour.
Networking	Low to moderate throughput	Up to 5 Gbps
Best Use cases	Applications with short CPU spikes, including light websites, line of business apps, and microservices.	Applications that typically have prolonged CPU spikes, including light build/test/staging servers, website/web apps, virtual desktops, and small/medium databases.

Knowing Which EC2 Instance To Choose

Choosing the best EC2 instance type can be daunting. But rightsizing your instances to your use cases is critical to getting an optimal price-performance ratio. The good news is using CloudZero Advisor (free tool) gets you recommendations for the best AWS instance type by service, region, resource type, pricing, and more.

Better yet, CloudZero continuously tracks, analyzes, and alerts about trending costs of T3 instances in Unlimited Mode to prevent going over your budget. You’ll see the costs down to the hour — by business dimensions you actually care about, like cost per customer, team, project, deployment, environment, etc.

Schedule a demo today to see how it works.