A savings plan is a discount plan that reduces costs on pay-as-you-go Elastic Container Instances (ECIs) in exchange for a commitment to a consistent hourly spend over a one-year or three-year term. The plan applies automatically to eligible instances — no manual matching required. Preemptible ECIs are not covered.
Choose a plan type
Two plan types are available. General-purpose savings plans offer more flexibility; ECS compute savings plans offer deeper discounts.
| Plan type | Applies to | Trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| General-purpose savings plan | All pay-as-you-go ECIs, regardless of the Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instance type used to create them | More flexibility, lower discount rate |
| ECS compute savings plan | Pay-as-you-go ECIs created from a specific ECS instance type and billed based on that instance type | Higher discount rate, less flexibility |
Use a general-purpose savings plan if your workloads span multiple ECS instance types or if you expect to change instance types during the commitment period. Use an ECS compute savings plan if your workloads consistently use a specific ECS instance type and you want the maximum discount.
For details about effective rules and pricing, see Savings plans.
Purchase a savings plan
Before purchasing, determine your hourly commitment — the amount (in USD/hour) you commit to spending.
Choose your purchase path based on whether you have existing ECI usage:
If you have existing ECIs: Go to the Purchase recommendation page to get a system-generated recommendation based on your historical usage.
If you have no existing ECIs: Estimate your expected ECI usage and calculate an hourly commitment based on the applicable discount rate. Then go to the Savings Plan buy page to complete the purchase.
You can also access both options from Savings Plans in the ECS console.
For a full walkthrough, see Purchase and apply savings plans.
View savings plan usage and bills
After the savings plan takes effect, verify coverage and review bills in the Expenses and Costs console.
View bills for individual ECIs
In the left-side navigation pane, choose Bills > Bill Details, then click the Billing Details tab. Each ECI's billing details are listed here. Instances whose fees are offset by the savings plan generate no bill entries.
View savings plan coverage and utilization
In the left-side navigation pane, choose Savings Plan > Overview. On the Savings Plan page, you can view the overview, details, usage, and coverage of savings plans.