Spot Instances
Spot Instances are a pricing model offered by cloud providers like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud that allows users to purchase unused compute capacity at significantly discounted rates, often up to 90% off on-demand prices. They are ideal for fault-tolerant, flexible, or interruptible workloads such as batch processing, data analysis, and testing environments. However, they can be terminated by the cloud provider with short notice (e.g., 2 minutes in AWS) when capacity is needed for on-demand instances.
Developers should use Spot Instances to drastically reduce cloud computing costs for workloads that can handle interruptions, such as big data analytics, CI/CD pipelines, or rendering jobs. They are particularly valuable in scalable architectures where tasks can be distributed and restarted without significant impact, making them a key component in cost-optimized cloud strategies for startups and enterprises alike.