EBS gp2 volumes that should be gp3
gp3 is the next generation of the same disk: cheaper per GB, with better baseline performance. Migrating is a type change, with no downtime.
What this problem is
gp2 and gp3 are both general-purpose SSD volumes, and gp3 replaced gp2 as the recommended default. The price difference is straightforward: gp3 costs roughly 20% less per gigabyte. There is no trade-off to weigh — gp3 is simultaneously cheaper and better.
The more consequential difference is how performance is defined. Under gp2, IOPS is tied to size: to get more throughput you had to provision a volume larger than you needed. Under gp3, every volume ships with a 3,000 IOPS baseline regardless of size, and extra performance is purchased separately.
Which means many accounts hold gp2 volumes that are deliberately oversized — inflated to reach an IOPS target. Those volumes pay twice for the type choice: gp2's higher per-GB price, and gigabytes that exist only to buy performance gp3 includes at baseline.
How we detect it
We list volumes across every enabled region with DescribeVolumes, which reports each volume's type, size and provisioned IOPS. The comparison is between what the gp2 volume costs today and what the same size would cost as gp3.
- EBS gp2 volumes that should be gp3
What it costs
gp2 runs about $0.10 per GB-month and gp3 about $0.08 per GB-month (us-east-1) — close to a 20% difference. Across 8 TB provisioned that is roughly $160 a month.
Public AWS list prices, us-east-1, subject to change. The figure in your report is computed against your resources in your regions.
How it appears in the report
An illustrative example, with invented resources and figures. In the report each finding carries the real resource, its region, and the fix command where a safe one exists.
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