AWS EC2 vs Banana
A detailed comparison to help you choose between AWS EC2 and Banana.
Quick Verdict
3.9/5
AWS EC2
0 reviews
1.2/5
Banana
0 reviews
AWS EC2 is rated higher (3.9 vs 1.2). 124 Availability Zones in 39 geographic regions Banana was an ML inference hosting platform (Docker-based, Potassium framework). The service shut down permanently on March 31, 2024; do not purchase. Alternatives: Replicate, Modal, RunPod, Beam, Baseten.
 AWS EC2 The original cloud — 750+ instance types | Banana DEFUNCT — serverless GPU inference platform sunset Feb 2024, shut down March 31, 2024 | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 3.9 (0 reviews)✓ | 1.2 (0 reviews) |
| Pricing model | usage-based (per-second On-Demand, Spot, Savings Plans; free tier credits for new accounts) | usage-based (historical; shut down 2024-03-31) |
| Starting price | From $0.0042/mo✓ | From $2024/mo |
| Best for | Teams with AWS expertise needing the broadest instance selection, global regions, GPU/bare metal options, and commitment-based discounts for steady production workloads | Nobody — the platform shut down on March 31, 2024. Use Replicate, Modal, RunPod, Beam, or Baseten for serverless GPU inference. |
| Specifications (entry plan) | ||
| CPU cores | — | — |
| RAM | 0.5 GB | — |
| Storage | — | — |
| Bandwidth | — | — |
| SLA uptime | 99.99% | — |
| Data-center count | — | — |
| €/GB RAM/mo | €0.01 | — |
| Features | ||
| IPv6 | ✓ | |
| DDoS protection | ✓ | |
| Automated backups | ||
| Snapshots | ||
| Managed option | ||
| Bare metal | ||
| GPU available | ||
| S3-compatible | ||
| Hourly billing | ✓ | |
| Free tier | ✓ | |
| Data-center locations | ||
| Regions | 39 AWS regions / 124 AZs plus Local Zones and Wavelength | — |
| Tags | ||
| Tags | free tierhourly billingipv6ddos protectionbackups includedmanaged optionbare metalgpu availables3 compatibleeu datacenterus datacenterapac datacenterapi accessterraform providerkubernetes support | gpu availableus datacenterapi access |
| Visit AWS EC2 → | Visit Banana → | |
AWS EC2
Pros
- + Widest hardware catalog in the market — 1,000+ instance types including Arm, bare metal and GPU families
- + Per-second billing with real cost levers: Spot up to 90% off, Savings Plans up to 72% off
- + 99.99% region-level SLA across 124 AZs in 39 regions with explicit service credits
- + Mature ecosystem: AMIs, Marketplace, Terraform, Systems Manager, and deep service integration
Cons
- - Total cost is a system of meters — EBS, snapshots, elastic IPv4, data transfer and add-ons dwarf the instance price
- - Requires real AWS expertise: VPC design, security groups, IAM and patching are all self-managed
- - Single-instance SLA is only 99.5%; the 99.99% commitment requires multi-AZ architecture
- - Data transfer out is expensive enough to shape architecture decisions
Banana
Pros
- + Historical: developer-friendly Docker/Potassium deployment with scale-to-zero GPU autoscaling
- + Historical: per-second GPU billing with no charge while idle
- + Historical: warm pools and model caching reduced cold starts for popular models
- + The founder published an unusually candid shutdown account and migration guidance
Cons
- - Permanently shut down on March 31, 2024 — the service cannot be purchased or used
- - Pricing was opaque even while alive ($1,200/month Team tier, per-GPU costs unpublished)
- - No published uptime SLA and no independent benchmarks
- - Startup platform risk realized: GPU economics forced closure within two months' notice
- - Third-party listings of its pricing and features conflict and cannot be verified against a live product
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