Oracle Cloud (GPU) vs AWS EC2
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Oracle Cloud (GPU) and AWS EC2.
Quick Verdict
3.8/5
Oracle Cloud (GPU)
0 reviews
3.9/5
AWS EC2
0 reviews
AWS EC2 is rated higher (3.9 vs 3.8). Oracle Cloud Infrastructure includes an always-free A1 Arm allocation (2 OCPUs + 12 GB RAM since July 2026, halved from 4 OCPUs + 24 GB) and GPU shapes from ~$2/GPU-hour (A10 VM) to $10/GPU-hour (H100/H200) and $14-15 (B200/B300). 124 Availability Zones in 39 geographic regions
Oracle Cloud (GPU) Free A1 Arm instances with optional GPU |  AWS EC2 The original cloud — 750+ instance types | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 3.8 (0 reviews) | 3.9 (0 reviews)✓ |
| Pricing model | freemium | usage-based (per-second On-Demand, Spot, Savings Plans; free tier credits for new accounts) |
| Starting price | Free tier available✓ | From $0.0042/mo |
| Best for | Enterprise and serious training/inference workloads that want bare-metal NVIDIA or AMD GPU clusters at hyperscaler-reliable terms, especially MI300X and A100 value seekers and existing Oracle/database customers | Teams with AWS expertise needing the broadest instance selection, global regions, GPU/bare metal options, and commitment-based discounts for steady production workloads |
| Specifications (entry plan) | ||
| CPU cores | — | — |
| RAM | — | 0.5 GB |
| Storage | — | — |
| Bandwidth | — | — |
| SLA uptime | 99.9% | 99.99%✓ |
| Data-center count | 50 | — |
| €/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 | 50+ regions across 28 countries (NA, SA, EU, MEA, APAC) | 39 AWS regions / 124 AZs plus Local Zones and Wavelength |
| Tags | ||
| Tags | free tiergpu availableeu datacenterus datacenterapac datacenterapi accessarm processors | free tierhourly billingipv6ddos protectionbackups includedmanaged optionbare metalgpu availables3 compatibleeu datacenterus datacenterapac datacenterapi accessterraform providerkubernetes support |
| Visit Oracle Cloud (GPU) → | Visit AWS EC2 → | |
Oracle Cloud (GPU)
Pros
- + Broadest accelerator lineup of any hyperscaler: NVIDIA Blackwell/Hopper/Ampere plus AMD MI300X/MI355X, VMs and bare metal
- + Below-AWS/Azure on-demand GPU list pricing (H100 $10/GPU-hr, A100 80GB $4, MI300X $6) with published, checkable rates
- + Supercluster-class networking (up to 3,200 Gb/sec RDMA) and large local NVMe per node for training checkpoints
- + Credit-backed compute SLA and a full cloud stack (storage, K8s, databases, S3-compatible object) in 50+ regions
Cons
- - GPU quota and capacity processes can require sales engagement; 8-GPU node minimums on the best shapes
- - OCI console/IAM complexity and thinner community documentation than AWS/GCP
- - The 'up to 220% cheaper' claim is a dated vendor comparison; neoclouds undercut on some shapes
- - Egress, storage, image licensing and commitment terms add to headline GPU rates; free tier is CPU-only
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
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