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Computecheat sheet

Amazon Lightsail

AWS with the training wheels on: fixed-price monthly bundles ($3.50–$40) that roll compute, storage, and data transfer into one predictable number. The right tool for WordPress, dev environments, and small apps — and the wrong one past ~16 GB RAM.

Last reviewed: July 14, 2026

Prefer step by step? Take the guided Amazon Lightsail walkthrough — free, anonymous, interactive.Have an AI assistant? Jump to the copy-paste audit prompt at the bottom of this sheet.

TL;DR: Lightsail is intentionally simpler AWS — fixed-price monthly bundles that include compute, storage, and data transfer in one predictable number, running on real EC2 underneath. It's the combo meal to EC2's à-la-carte menu: the right call for WordPress sites, dev environments, small apps, and learning, where billing anxiety would otherwise dominate. When you outgrow it, a snapshot converts to standard EC2 — the on-ramp goes both ways.

The numbers

  • Bundles from $3.50/month (512 MB / 1 vCPU / 20 GB SSD + included transfer) up to $40 (2–4 GB RAM, 1–3 TB transfer).
  • Everything's bundled — instance + EBS + static IP + egress in one figure; the equivalent EC2 stack bills each separately, and small apps get bitten hardest by per-GB egress.
  • Overages are gentle: $0.09/GB past the included transfer — no penalty, no shutdown.
  • Underrated wins: snapshots at $0.05/GB-mo, free static IPs while attached, managed MySQL/PostgreSQL from ~$15/mo.
  • Field examples: a WordPress portfolio on the $10 bundle absorbed a viral spike with no surprise charges; a SaaS MVP ran a $20 instance + $15 managed Postgres = ~$35/mo vs ~$80–120 for the EC2+RDS equivalent.

Do this

  1. Match the bundle to the workload — $3.50–$10 for dev/test and WordPress, $20–40 for a small two-tier app; a $20 bundle costs $20 every month, full stop.
  2. Use it for ephemeral environments — snapshot a "base" image, clone per project at $5–10 each, delete when done; no orphaned resources.
  3. Pair an app instance with a managed database (MySQL/PostgreSQL from ~$15/mo, automated backups, no surprise I/O charges) for a real two-tier stack.
  4. Go hybrid when you need real AWS services — VPC-peer Lightsail into your main VPC to reach RDS, S3, etc., without leaving the fixed-price umbrella.
  5. Graduate to EC2 when you cross ~16 GB RAM — at $80–160/mo per instance, standard EC2 with a Savings Plan or Reserved Instance is cheaper.

Gotchas

  • Simple because limited — no Auto Scaling Groups, only a basic load balancer, no fine-grained IAM, and a reduced CloudWatch surface; a workload needing horizontal autoscaling on custom metrics has outgrown it.
  • The value inverts at the high end — big instances are cheaper on EC2 + commitments; Lightsail shines small-to-medium.
  • Migration is a snapshot — convert to EC2 when complexity or size demands it, no lock-in.

Skip this if

Run this audit with your AI assistant

Paste this into Claude, ChatGPT, or any agent that can run the AWS CLI with read-only credentials. It audits your account for exactly the waste this sheet describes — and changes nothing.

You are auditing an AWS account to decide where Amazon Lightsail beats
(or loses to) standard EC2. Use the AWS CLI with READ-ONLY credentials.
Do not create, modify, or delete anything — report findings and
recommended (unapplied) fixes only.

1. Existing Lightsail: aws lightsail get-instances / get-databases —
   bundle sizes, and whether any instance is large enough (16 GB+ RAM,
   $80+/mo) that EC2 + a Savings Plan would be cheaper.
2. EC2 candidates for Lightsail: small single-instance workloads (t3/t4g
   .micro/small/medium) with an EBS volume + Elastic IP + notable egress
   — estimate the à-la-carte EC2 cost (instance + EBS + EIP + $0.09/GB
   egress) vs a fixed Lightsail bundle.
3. Complexity gate: flag anything needing ASGs, fine-grained IAM, ALB
   rules, or many AWS-service integrations as NOT a Lightsail fit.
4. Data-transfer check: identify small apps paying disproportionate
   egress that a bundle's included transfer would absorb.

Report a table: workload | current cost | Lightsail bundle fit? | est.
$/mo | note (outgrown / good fit / hybrid via VPC peering). Change
nothing.
Works with any assistant that can run shell commands.

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