EC2 entry price fell from $0.10 to ~$0.005/instance-hour by 2018 — ~20× cheaper at the floor (Jeff Barr, HashiConf)

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.

Source: HashiConf 2018 keynote transcript (hashicorp.com).

Confidence: Verified.

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 Amazon EC2 launched as limited public beta August 25, 2006 — single m1.small instance at $0.10/hour for honest framing.

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.