# Cloud price history

> Twenty years of AWS and Alibaba Cloud compute, block storage, object storage, and egress prices—fast early cuts, later plateaus, and slower full bills.

---

LLMS index: [llms.txt](/llms.txt)

---

> [!IMPORTANT]
> Observation windows differ by series. The common current endpoint is the
> 2026-08-22 snapshot. Implied half-life describes the observed interval; it is
> **not** a forecast.

## Direct answer {#answer}

Cloud prices fell substantially, but they did not follow a stable “halve every
two years” path. Early competition produced large step changes; mature core
meters often plateaued. Recent gains are more likely to require moving to a new
instance generation, architecture, storage class, or commitment model than
waiting for an old SKU to become cheaper automatically.

![AWS and Alibaba Cloud nominal unit-price indexes show early step declines and later plateaus.](/data/price-history/2026-08-24-v1/charts/price_index.png)
{caption="Nominal unit-price index; every series starts at 100 and uses a logarithmic vertical scale. Source: price-history 2026-08-24-v1."}

## What actually halved—and how slowly {#half-life}

| Series | Observed span | Start → end | Nominal change | Implied half-life |
| --- | --- | ---: | ---: | ---: |
| AWS ~2 vCPU / 8 GiB compute | 2007–2026 | `$0.400 → $0.10584/h` | `-73.5%` | `9.8 years` |
| AWS S3 Standard capacity | 2006–2026 | `$0.150 → $0.023/GB-month` | `-84.7%` | `7.6 years` |
| AWS general-purpose SSD capacity | 2014–2026 | `$0.100 → $0.080/GB-month` | `-20.0%` | `37.8 years` |
| AWS internet-egress marginal rate | 2006–2026 | `$0.200 → $0.090/GB` | `-55.0%` | `17.7 years` |
| Alibaba ECS 2C8G monthly | 2016–2026 | `¥302 → ¥238.60/month` | `-21.0%` | `30.3 years` |
| Alibaba ECS 2C8G PAYG | 2016–2026 | `¥1.31 → ¥0.4971/h` | `-62.1%` | `7.4 years` |
| Alibaba OSS Standard public effective rate | 2014–2026 | `¥0.300 → ¥0.090/GB-month` | `-70.0%` | `7.1 years` |
| Alibaba SSD / ESSD PL1 capacity | 2016–2026 | `¥1.00 → ¥1.00/GB-month` | `0%` | none |
| Alibaba ECS internet egress | 2016–2026 | `¥0.80 → ¥0.80/GB` | `0%` | none |

The values come from
[`long_run_metrics.csv`](/data/price-history/2026-08-24-v1/tables/long_run_metrics.csv).
Inflation-adjusted figures are published separately; they do not correct for
cross-generation performance.

![Implied cloud-price half-lives are much longer than a two-year Moore cadence.](/data/price-history/2026-08-24-v1/charts/halving_times.png)
{caption="Historical nominal half-life by series. A flat series has no finite nominal half-life."}

## Four different histories {#four}

### Compute: price cuts became migration work {#compute}

AWS same-advertised-capacity compute fell rapidly through 2017, then roughly
plateaued: `m4.large` was `$0.108/h`, `m5.large` and `m6i.large` `$0.096`,
`m7i.large` `$0.1008`, and `m8i.large` `$0.10584`. Price-performance improved,
but realizing it required moving generation and validating the workload.

Alibaba's monthly and PAYG curves diverged. A 2C8G monthly shape fell only 21%
from 2016 to 2026, while PAYG fell 62.1%. Much of the latter was a narrowing of
the elasticity premium: a full PAYG month went from `3.17×` monthly to `1.52×`.

### Object storage: closest to hardware—then a ten-year plateau {#object}

S3 Standard's first tier fell from `$0.15` in 2006 to `$0.023` in 2016, then
stayed nominally flat through the snapshot. Alibaba OSS Standard moved from
`¥0.30` in 2014 to a `¥0.12` directory rate; a durable public effective rate of
`¥0.09` appeared in 2024. The large early fall did not remove request,
retrieval, minimum-duration, or egress meters.

### Block storage: capacity plateau, performance-density gain {#block}

EBS gp2 to gp3 reduced capacity price only 20%. For a 200 GiB volume, however,
baseline IOPS rose from 600 to 3,000, so price per baseline IOPS fell 84%.
Alibaba's 2016 SSD and 2026 ESSD PL1 both anchor at `¥1/GB-month`; product
semantics and performance changed even though the capacity meter did not.

### Egress: the least silicon-like meter {#egress}

AWS first-paid-tier egress reached `$0.09/GB` in 2014 and then remained flat;
the 2021 free allowance improved small-account average cost but not large-volume
marginal cost. Alibaba ECS Hangzhou egress stayed at `¥0.8/GB` across the
2016–2026 anchors. Path engineering—CDN, private connectivity, caching,
regional placement, or self-hosted transit—matters more than waiting.

## Full bills move slower than headline compute {#baskets}

The capacity basket is approximately 2 vCPU / 8 GiB compute + 200 GB/GiB
general block storage + 1 TiB monthly internet egress, plus current AWS public
IPv4. It is a capacity comparison, not a performance or SLA comparison.

| Basket | Start | End | Change | Implied half-life |
| --- | ---: | ---: | ---: | ---: |
| AWS 2008 → 2026 | `$486.08/month` | `$180.07/month` | `-63.0%` | `12.6 years` |
| Alibaba monthly 2016 → 2026 | `¥1,321.20/month` | `¥1,257.80/month` | `-4.8%` | `141.0 years` |
| Alibaba PAYG 2016 → 2026 | `¥1,979.90/month` | `¥1,488.68/month` | `-24.8%` | `24.3 years` |

![Stacked bill baskets show storage and egress diluting compute savings.](/data/price-history/2026-08-24-v1/charts/basket_composition.png)
{caption="Capacity-equivalent monthly bill composition. Static storage and egress rates dilute compute savings."}

In the 2026 AWS basket, egress is 46.2% of the bill—larger than compute at
42.9%. In the Alibaba monthly basket, unchanged egress is 65.1%. A workload's
bill weights decide whether a new compute generation matters.

## Budgeting and FinOps implications {#implications}

1. Do not budget automatic 10–20% annual list-price cuts for mature core SKUs.
2. Benchmark new generations every two to three years; migrate first, commit second.
3. Keep separate budgets for compute, storage capacity, storage performance,
   object activity, and network paths.
4. Preserve public price as the contract anchor, but plan using invoice-level
   effective rates and commitment waste.
5. Model high-egress workloads independently; their economics are not governed
   by the compute curve.
6. For self-hosting, hardware also arrives in steps. New server purchases capture
   technology gains only at refresh time, while facilities, power, and network
   set a floor.

## Boundaries {#boundaries}

- Public price is not enterprise net price.
- Same-advertised-capacity generations are not performance-equivalent.
- S3, OSS, EBS, ESSD, and self-hosted systems differ in durability, latency,
  topology, and operations.
- Alibaba's exact long-run compute series starts in 2016 because earlier full
  SKU tables could not be reconstructed reliably.
- The endpoint may change after 2026-08-22; refresh before purchase.

## Data and sources {#data}

- [Full report](/data/price-history/2026-08-24-v1/report.md)
- [Price anchors](/data/price-history/2026-08-24-v1/tables/price_anchors.csv)
- [Normalized indexes](/data/price-history/2026-08-24-v1/tables/normalized_price_index.csv)
- [Workload baskets](/data/price-history/2026-08-24-v1/tables/workload_baskets.csv)
- [Source ledger](/data/price-history/2026-08-24-v1/tables/source_ledger.csv)
- [Checksums](/data/price-history/2026-08-24-v1/checksums.txt)