Amazon Lightsail
Simplified VPS offering with predictable flat monthly pricing — compute, storage, and data transfer in one bundle.
Verified against AWS documentation · 2026-08-28
Key facts
- 01Everything is bundled: instance, SSD storage, static IP, DNS, and a monthly data transfer allowance for one flat price
- 02Comes with pre-configured blueprints — WordPress, LAMP, Node.js, Windows — launch in minutes, no VPC design required
- 03Also offers managed databases (MySQL/PostgreSQL), containers, load balancers, and a CDN, all with the same flat-rate model
- 04Runs on EC2 under the hood; can peer into your default VPC and upgrade to full EC2 via snapshot export when you outgrow it
- 05Real-world divergence: exam paints Lightsail as small-workload-only, but AWS has since added memory-optimized (up to 512 GB) and compute-optimized (up to 72 vCPU) bundles — answer to exam convention
Exam triggers
Phrases and scenarios that point here.
- "Predictable monthly price", "simple", "low cost", "minimal AWS experience"
- Small business website, blog, or dev/test environment → Lightsail, not EC2
- "Launch a WordPress site quickly without managing infrastructure details"
- User wants a VPS-like experience without learning VPCs, security groups, or EBS
Not this service
- Fine-grained control, Auto Scaling, or Spot pricing → EC2
- Enterprise-grade managed relational database with read replicas across AZs → RDS
Use cases
- 01A freelancer spinning up client WordPress sites — one flat price per site makes quoting hosting costs trivial
- 02Dev/test sandboxes where you want a throwaway server this afternoon, not a VPC design meeting
- 03A small SaaS MVP: Lightsail instance + managed database + load balancer, all readable on one bill
- 04Migration ramp: start on Lightsail, snapshot and export to EC2 once traffic outgrows the bundles
- 05Think of it as the fixed-price lunch menu vs EC2's à la carte — less choice, zero bill anxiety
How it's charged
- 01Flat monthly rate per bundle — you know the price before you launch, billed hourly up to the monthly cap
- 02IPv6-only bundles cost less than dual-stack (IPv4 included) — the IPv4 address carries a premium
- 03Data transfer allowance is included per bundle, but overages are billed per GB — the classic Lightsail bill surprise
- 04Allowance varies by Region — some Asia Pacific Regions include roughly half the transfer of US Regions at the same price
- 05Databases, containers, load balancers, CDN, and extra block storage are each their own flat-rate add-ons — the 'one price' is per resource, not per account
