AWS ECS Pricing Calculator (2026): Fargate vs EC2

AWS ECS Pricing in 2026: The Direct Answer

ECS is free. Unlike EKS, there is no control plane fee. You pay only for the compute that runs your tasks: Fargate at $0.04048/vCPU-hour + $0.004445/GB-hour, or standard EC2 instance pricing if you use the EC2 launch type.

Fargate vs EC2 Launch Type — Quick Decision

• Pick Fargate if you want zero infrastructure management, your workload is bursty, or you have fewer than ~10 steady tasks. Roughly 20% premium per unit of compute but zero idle-capacity waste.
• Pick EC2 for steady workloads at 20+ tasks, when you need GPU instances, or when you want to share node resources across multiple tasks for bin-packing efficiency.

ECS Cost Optimization Levers

1. Compute Savings Plans cover Fargate (and EC2) — 30-60% off for 1-year, up to 70% for 3-year
2. Fargate Spot for stateless/fault-tolerant tasks — ~70% discount with 2-minute reclamation notice
3. Graviton (ARM) for x86-compatible workloads — ~20% cheaper per vCPU-hr
4. Right-size task definitions — see the Container Size Calculator
5. Schedule scaling — use ECS service auto-scaling to match capacity to actual demand

For Kubernetes-equivalent pricing including the EKS control plane fee, see the EKS Pricing Calculator. For other AWS cost calculators, see the AWS Pricing Guide.