{"id":1704,"slug":"ec2-entry-price-half-cent-per-hour-2018","title":"EC2 entry price fell from $0.10 to ~$0.005/instance-hour by 2018 — ~20× cheaper at the floor (Jeff Barr, HashiConf)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","status":"current","audiences":["kevin","dev","candid-team"],"topics":["web-infrastructure","cloud-infrastructure-economics"],"reference_body":"**Claim:** Jeff Barr (AWS Chief Evangelist), HashiConf 2018: **\"EC2 was 10 cents an instance. The cheapest EC2 instance is now a half of a cent per instance hour.\"** That is ~20× cheaper at the entry floor.\n\n**Source:** HashiConf 2018 keynote transcript (hashicorp.com).\n\n**Confidence:** Verified.\n\n**Caveat:** The cheapest 2018 instance is *not* the same hardware as the 2006 m1.small — the entry price collapsed but the comparison is not unit-for-unit. Pair with [[ec2-launch-august-2006-ten-cents-per-hour]] for honest framing.\n\n**Why this matters for Candid:** The \"20× cheaper\" line is the headline for entry-tier compute, useful in client-facing articles when paired with the caveat.","rationale_body":null,"metadata":null,"links":{"outgoing":[{"slug":"ec2-launch-august-2006-ten-cents-per-hour","title":"Amazon EC2 launched as limited public beta August 25, 2006 — single m1.small instance at $0.10/hour","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"}],"incoming":[{"slug":"research-brief-falling-cost-floor-real-web-functionality-smb-june-2026","title":"Research brief: the falling cost floor of \"real\" web functionality for SMBs (June 2026)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"magnitude-summary-storage-compute-bandwidth-structural","title":"Magnitude summary: storage ~85% / 7×; compute ~20×; bandwidth ~240×; plus the capex→opex structural shift","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"}]},"created_at":"2026-06-21T13:17:00.453Z","updated_at":"2026-06-21T13:17:00.453Z"}