Coverage · Amazon EC2
Reserved Instances, Standard or Convertible, matched right.
EC2 is the one service where the reservation itself has choices — Standard or Convertible, regional or zonal, size-flexible or not. Getting those choices right (and matching them to what's actually running) is where EC2's deeper ceiling either pays off or gets stranded.
- Must match exactly
- Instance family, region or Availability Zone (scope), platform (OS), tenancy
- Can flex
- Size within family via size flexibility (Standard RI, regional scope); family, size, OS, or tenancy via exchange (Convertible RI)
- Term
- 1-year or 3-year
- Payment option
- No Upfront, Partial Upfront, or All Upfront
- Exchange & resale
- Standard RI: AZ/scope modification, RI Marketplace resale. Convertible RI: full mid-term exchange, no resale
Discount ceilings per AWS published pricing; your actual rates depend on instance class, term, and payment option — Reserver shows you the exact math for your fleet.
Where the money goes missing
Three ways Amazon EC2 leaks.
The leak
Standard vs Convertible, chosen wrong
Standard RIs buy the deepest discount but can't change family, size, or OS mid-term — only AZ, or an early sale on the Marketplace. Convertible buys flexibility at a shallower discount. Pick the wrong one for a family that turns out to move, and you're stuck, or you overpaid for flexibility you never used.
What Reserver does
The run history is scanned, not guessed. Reserver looks at how long an instance family has actually run before recommending Standard or Convertible — a two-year-old family gets a different answer than one launched last week.
The leak
Regional flexibility left on the table
A Zonal RI locks a reservation to one Availability Zone; teams that reserve zonal out of habit lose size flexibility and the ability to have the discount follow usage anywhere in the region.
What Reserver does
Regional and size-flexible by default. Reserver's recommendations default to Regional scope with size flexibility unless a workload specifically needs zonal capacity reservation, so one reservation covers a mix of sizes in the family automatically.
The leak
The renewal cliff, at EC2's scale
EC2 fleets are usually the largest of the three services — a lapsed term here reverts the most instances to on-demand at once, and it's easy to miss in a large account.
What Reserver does
Expiry radar across the whole EC2 fleet. Reserver tracks every EC2 reservation's end date, flags it ahead of the lapse, and can re-buy automatically on Autopilot.
What Reserver does
Every Amazon EC2 reservation, accounted for.
Full EC2 inventory scan
Every instance's family, size, OS, tenancy, and AZ, scanned directly from the account.
EC2 reservation ledger
Standard and Convertible RIs alike: term, payment option, expiry date, and what's covering it.
One-click purchasing & exchanges
Accept a recommendation and Reserver executes it — including a Convertible RI exchange — through the AWS purchase APIs.
Expiry radar & renewal autopilot
Every EC2 reservation's end date tracked and flagged ahead of the lapse — or re-bought automatically on Autopilot.
At your size
Same Amazon EC2, different scale.
A handful of EC2 instances, usually one or two families — the size flexibility question rarely even comes up yet.
A renewal missed by 14 days ≈ $92 — pays for about 3 weeks of Reserver.
Dozens of instances across a few families means the Standard-vs-Convertible choice starts to matter, and drifts between reviews.
A renewal missed by 14 days ≈ $951 — pays for about 6 months of Reserver.
The largest, most varied fleet of the three services — families, tenancy, and scope choices multiply across every account.
A renewal missed by 14 days ≈ $6,904 — pays for a year or more of Reserver.
The same flat price whether you track 10 reservations or 10,000 — never a percentage of what you save.
Keep reading
Go deeper on Amazon EC2.
Glossary
Guides
FAQ
Amazon EC2 questions
What's the difference between Standard and Convertible EC2 RIs?
Standard RIs buy the deepest discount but lock family, size, and OS for the term — only AZ/scope can be modified, or the RI can be sold early on the Marketplace. Convertible RIs exchange into a different family, size, OS, or tenancy mid-term, at a shallower discount.
What is size flexibility?
Each size in a family carries a normalization factor, and the reservation's discount applies proportionally across any mix of sizes in that family. On EC2 it's a Standard RI feature, and only at Regional scope on default tenancy. RDS has its own version within a class type; ElastiCache has none.
Can we sell an EC2 reservation we don't need?
Yes, if it's a Standard RI — the RI Marketplace lets you resell the remaining term. Convertible RIs and every RDS/ElastiCache reservation have no resale option.
Does Reserver recommend Standard or Convertible?
Reserver looks at how long an instance family has actually been running before recommending either — a stable, long-running family gets pointed at Standard's deeper discount; a family with a real chance of resizing gets Convertible's flexibility instead.
Stop overpaying for a steady fleet.
Reserver is in early access. Join the list and we'll onboard you as capacity opens up — first recommendation within minutes of connecting.