Table of Contents
- What Lightsail is
- Bundles and prices
- Add-ons: snapshots, databases, storage, load balancer, CDN
- Billing: hourly, prorated, capped
- Burstable CPU, in Amazon's words
- Data transfer and overage
- Three US regions
- Free Tier
- Upgrade to EC2 and the rest of AWS
- Support
- Against the fixed-price hosts
- Verdict and rating
- FAQ
- Sources
What Lightsail is
Lightsail packages an EC2-class virtual server, a disk, a transfer allowance and an address into a bundle with a monthly price, and puts a small console in front of it. The pricing page lists what every plan includes: "Static IP address, Intuitive management console, DNS management, One-click SSH terminal access (Linux/Unix), One-click RDP access (Windows), Powerful API, Highly available SSD storage, Server monitoring". Around the server, Lightsail sells the pieces a small application needs (managed database, block storage, object storage, load balancer, CDN, container service) each at a fixed price. The whole thing is a VPS with the AWS platform behind it, and the trade is that you pay AWS prices for the simplicity.
Bundles and prices
Linux/Unix bundles from the pricing page in September 2026, with IPv4 (dual-stack) and IPv6-only prices. The footnote on vCPUs: "Virtual servers created on or before June 29, 2023 have 1 vCPU"; new servers at the first three sizes get 2.
| With IPv4 | IPv6-only | Memory | vCPUs | SSD | Transfer |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $5 | $3.50 | 512 MB | 2 | 20 GB | 1 TB |
| $7 | $5 | 1 GB | 2 | 40 GB | 2 TB |
| $12 | $10 | 2 GB | 2 | 60 GB | 3 TB |
| $24 | $20 | 4 GB | 2 | 80 GB | 4 TB |
| $44 | $40 | 8 GB | 2 | 160 GB | 5 TB |
| $84 | $80 | 16 GB | 4 | 320 GB | 6 TB |
| $164 | $160 | 32 GB | 8 | 640 GB | 7 TB |
| $384 | $380 | 64 GB | 16 | 1280 GB | 8 TB |
| $884 | $880 | 128 GB | 32 | 1280 GB | 9 TB |
Windows bundles (licence included), with IPv4:
| Monthly | Memory | vCPUs | SSD | Transfer |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $9.50 | 512 MB | 2 | 30 GB | 1 TB |
| $14 | 1 GB | 2 | 40 GB | 2 TB |
| $22 | 2 GB | 2 | 60 GB | 3 TB |
| $44 | 4 GB | 2 | 80 GB | 4 TB |
| $74 | 8 GB | 2 | 160 GB | 5 TB |
| $124 | 16 GB | 4 | 320 GB | 6 TB |
| $244 | 32 GB | 8 | 640 GB | 7 TB |
The IPv6-only bundles are the same server without a public IPv4 address, and the FAQ notes that "Static IPs cannot be attached to IPv6-only instances". They suit a server behind a load balancer or CDN, or one reached only from IPv6 networks; for a public website, the IPv4 bundle is the one to buy. A Lightsail for Research line exists and is priced separately.
Add-ons: snapshots, databases, storage, load balancer, CDN
| Add-on | Price (pricing page, September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Snapshots (manual and automatic) | $0.05 per GB a month |
| Block storage | $0.10 per allocated GB a month, from 8 GB ($0.80) to 256 GB ($25.60) listed |
| Managed database (1 GB, 1 core, 40 GB) | $15 standard; $30 high availability |
| Load balancer | $18 a month |
| CDN distribution | $2.50 (50 GB), $10 (200 GB), $35 (500 GB) |
| Object storage | $1 (5 GB, 25 GB transfer), $3 (100 GB), $5 (250 GB) |
| Container service node | Nano $7 (0.25 vCPU, 512 MB), Micro $10 (1 GB), then Small and up |
The pricing page's own example sums it: a $5 WordPress instance plus a $2.50 CDN distribution and a $1 object storage bucket is "$8.50 to get your WordPress site delivered around the world"; a container service, database and load balancer is "$40 USD / month". A snapshot of a 60 GB disk costs up to $3 a month, which is worth paying: it is the only point-in-time copy Lightsail offers, and the pricing page confirms snapshots can be automatic.
Billing: hourly, prorated, capped
From the FAQ: "Lightsail plans are charged on an hourly, on-demand basis, so you only pay for a plan when you're using it", and "For every Lightsail plan you use, we charge you the fixed hourly price, up to the maximum monthly plan cost." If you delete an instance early, "we only charge you a prorated cost, based on the total number of hours that you used your Lightsail instance." That makes Lightsail closer to Vultr and Linode than to monthly hosts: a server for a day costs a day. The FAQ adds that instances "are charged only when they're in the running or stopped state", so a stopped instance still bills; delete what you are not using.
Burstable CPU, in Amazon's words
Lightsail's user guide: "Amazon Lightsail instances provide a baseline amount of CPU performance, but also have the ability to temporarily provide additional CPU performance above the baseline as needed. This is referred to as bursting." The FAQ describes the bundles as "burstable performance instances that provide a baseline level of CPU performance with the additional ability to burst above the baseline", for applications that "don't use the full CPU often or consistently, but occasionally need a performance burst", and adds that for sustained-CPU work "such as video encoding or HPC applications, we recommend you use Amazon EC2". The baseline percentage per bundle is not on the pricing page or FAQ; this review does not supply one. The practical reading is the same as for Azure's B-series (compared here): fine for a web server that idles between requests, wrong for a build box, an encoder or a busy database.
Data transfer and overage
Each bundle includes a transfer allowance (1 TB at $5, up to 9 TB at $884). The pricing footnote: "Both inbound and outbound data transfer count towards your data transfer allowance. Only outbound data transfer in excess of your plan's data transfer allowance is subject to overage charges." The FAQ lists the overage rate for the three US regions at $0.09 per GB. Container services include 500 GB a month with overage from $0.09 per GB. For a small site the allowances are generous; the overage matters for file-serving and video, where a fixed-price host with unmetered transfer (OVHcloud, Contabo, BuyVM) or Lightsail's own CDN is the better fit.
Three US regions
Lightsail's FAQ lists its regions; the US ones are US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio) and US West (Oregon), each with availability zones. AWS's region list also includes US West (N. California), but Lightsail's list does not, so Lightsail has no California location. Vultr and Linode have nine and ten US regions respectively; DigitalOcean sells Droplets in five US metros (two with the full lineup); Google Cloud nine regions. For most sites three well-placed regions are enough: N. Virginia for the East Coast and Europe, Oregon for the West Coast and Asia-Pacific, Ohio for the middle.
Free Tier
The pricing page says: "As part of the AWS Free Tier, you can get started with Amazon Lightsail for free" and points to the AWS Free Tier FAQs for the terms. The specific allowance, duration and eligibility are on that page rather than on Lightsail's, and change; read it before relying on a free month. Google Cloud's e2-micro and Oracle's Always Free tier are the free servers without a time limit, covered in their reviews.
Upgrade to EC2 and the rest of AWS
The reason to pick Lightsail over a cheaper VPS is this section. The FAQ: "Upgrade to EC2 is a feature that allows you to create a copy of your Lightsail instance in Amazon EC2", starting from an exported manual snapshot ("To get started, you need to export your Lightsail instance manual snapshot"); automatic snapshots "cannot be tagged or exported directly to Amazon EC2". The FAQ also describes VPC peering ("Just choose Enable VPC peering on your Lightsail account page, and Lightsail does the work for you") so an instance can reach RDS and other VPC resources privately. A project that starts as one $12 server and later needs Aurora, SQS or a GPU can grow inside the same account and the same region without a migration. No fixed-price VPS host offers that, and it is worth the price difference to a team that expects to need it.
Support
Lightsail support is AWS Support. The console, documentation and community forums are free; AWS Support plans are per account, and the support pricing page lists the lowest paid tier at a $29 a month minimum, with Business and Enterprise tiers priced as a percentage of AWS spend above higher minimums. For a $5 to $24 server, a $29 support plan is more than the server, which is the same trade-off as on Azure and Google Cloud and different from hosts like Hostwinds or InterServer, where a ticket is included. Plan to solve your own problems from the documentation, which is thorough.
Against the fixed-price hosts
| Provider | 2 GB plan | Monthly | Billing | US locations |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| InterServer | 1 slice: 1 core, 2 GB, 40 GB, 2 TB | $3 | Monthly | NYC, Dallas, LA |
| BuyVM | Slice 2048: 1 core, 2 GB, 40 GB, unmetered | $7 | Monthly | Las Vegas, NY |
| Hostwinds | 1 vCPU, 2 GB, 50 GB, 2 TB | $9.99 | Monthly | Dallas, Seattle |
| Vultr | vc2-1c-2gb: 1 vCPU, 2 GB, 55 GB, 2 TB | $10 | Hourly | Nine regions |
| Lightsail | 2 vCPUs, 2 GB, 60 GB, 3 TB | $12 | Hourly, capped | N. Virginia, Ohio, Oregon |
| Linode | Linode 2GB: 1 vCPU, 2 GB, 50 GB, 2 TB | $12 | Hourly | Ten regions |
| DigitalOcean | Basic 2 GiB: 1 vCPU, 50 GB, 2 TB | $12 | Hourly | NYC, SFO (full lineup); Atlanta, Richmond, Kansas City (Premium-CPU plans only) |
At 2 GB Lightsail matches Linode and DigitalOcean on price and gives a second (burstable) vCPU, more disk and more transfer than either; it costs $2 more than Vultr and four times InterServer. The Lightsail vs EC2 page covers the choice inside AWS, and the Google Cloud vs Lightsail page the choice between hyperscaler small servers.
Verdict and rating
Lightsail does what it says: one price, one console, a real server, inside AWS. Rating as a VPS: 4.0 out of 5. Credit for fixed bundles with hourly proration, a complete included feature list (static IP, DNS, snapshots, monitoring, API), a documented path into EC2, and add-ons priced plainly. Marked down for a 2 GB price above Vultr and far above the fixed-price hosts, burstable CPU with no published baseline on the plan pages, only three US regions and none in California, $0.09 per GB overage, and paid support that costs more than the server. The previous version of this review gave 4.1 on the strength of performance data it did not have; this one gives 4.0 on the documentation.
Choose Lightsail if your project lives in AWS, may grow into EC2, or needs its managed database, CDN and load balancer at fixed prices next to the server. Choose Vultr or Linode if you want hourly billing and an API without the AWS ecosystem and with more US regions. Choose InterServer or OVHcloud if the bill is the point.