Compare
Amazon EC2 vs Fly.io
Fly.io runs full-stack apps close to users with edge deployment, while EC2 offers global data-center compute without edge focus.
Short answer: Pick Amazon EC2 if you want general-purpose and specialized cloud compute; pick Fly.io if you want hardware-isolated edge VMs for agents. Amazon EC2 has a free plan; Fly.io has a free plan, paid from $29/month.
Which to pick
Pick Amazon EC2 if you want…
- General-purpose and specialized cloud compute
Pick Fly.io if you want…
- Hardware-isolated edge VMs for agents
- Edge-proximate app hosting
Side by side
- What it is
- Amazon EC2:Amazon EC2 provides secure, resizable virtual servers with a wide choice of processors, storage, networking, OS, and purchase models.
- Fly.io:Fly.io provides hardware-isolated Linux VMs (Sprites and Machines) that run close to users for AI agents and full-stack apps.
- Best for
- Amazon EC2:General-purpose and specialized cloud compute
- Fly.io:Hardware-isolated edge VMs for agents
- Who it’s for
- Amazon EC2:Developers, enterprises, and teams needing flexible cloud compute.
- Fly.io:Developers building AI agents, personal assistants, or apps that need low-latency edge compute.
- Pricing
- Amazon EC2:Freemium
- Fly.io:Freemium
- Starting price
- Amazon EC2:—
- Fly.io:$29/month (Support Standard)
- Free plan or trial
- Amazon EC2:Free trial
- Fly.io:—
- Plans
- Amazon EC2:—
- Fly.io:Machines shared-cpu-1x $0.0027 per hour · Machines performance-2x $0.0861 per hour · Sprites compute $0.07 / CPU-hour · Support Standard $29 per month · Support Premium $199 per month
- Works with
- Amazon EC2:—
- Fly.io:OpenRouter, GitHub, Slack, any HTTP API
Amazon EC2 features
- Resizable compute. Scale virtual servers up or down on demand with over 1,000 instance types.
- Processor choice. Select Intel, AMD, or Arm CPUs, including Graviton for price-performance.
- AWS Nitro security. Hardware-based isolation and virtualization for secure workloads.
- Flexible pricing. Pay-as-you-go On-Demand, Spot discounts up to 90%, or Savings Plans up to 72% off.
- High availability SLA. 99.99% availability with capacity reservations for critical events.
- GPU & ML support. Dedicated GPU instances and Capacity Blocks for machine-learning training and inference.
- Dedicated Hosts. Physical servers for license-bound software with optional Savings Plans.
- Per-second billing. Charges in one-second increments, removing cost of unused compute time.
Fly.io features
- Sprites. Sleep-aware VMs that checkpoint filesystem and services, allowing instant wake-up and rollback.
- Machines. Fast-booting, hardware-isolated VMs that scale to tens of thousands of users.
- Block Device Storage. Object-storage backed block device with automatic checkpointing and unlimited scaling.
- Connectors. Configure a credential once and share it across all Sprites with granular permissions and auto-rotation.
- Zero-Management Disk. Disk grows automatically up to 100 GB per Sprite, billed only for used bytes.
- Global Edge Network. Deploy in 18+ regions with <1 s boot time and 99.9 % SLA.
Amazon EC2 vs Fly.io FAQ
What is the difference between Amazon EC2 and Fly.io?+
Fly.io runs full-stack apps close to users with edge deployment, while EC2 offers global data-center compute without edge focus.
Should I use Amazon EC2 or Fly.io?+
Pick Amazon EC2 if you want general-purpose and specialized cloud compute. Pick Fly.io if you want hardware-isolated edge VMs for agents or edge-proximate app hosting.
Is Amazon EC2 or Fly.io free?+
Amazon EC2 has a free plan and paid plans. Fly.io has a free plan; paid plans start at $29/month (Support Standard).
On DevHunt
Based on each tool's website and DevHunt data. Details may change; check the official sites.