Choose between a selection of 60 different instance choices with multiple processor options (Intel Xeon Scalable processor or AMD EPYC processor), storage options (EBS or NVMe SSD), network options (up to 100 Gbps), and instance sizes to optimize both cost and performance for your workload needs.

By leveraging the higher number of cores per processor, M5 instances provide customers with a higher instance density than the previous generation, which results in a reduction in per-instance TCO. With the largest instance size of 24xlarge, customers can scale-up and consolidate their workloads on a fewer number of instances, to help lower their total cost of ownership.

M5 instances are built on the AWS Nitro System, a combination of dedicated hardware and lightweight hypervisor which delivers practically all of the compute and memory resources of the host hardware to your instances for better overall performance and security.

M5 and M5d instances feature either the 1st or 2nd generation Intel Xeon Platinum 8000 series processor (Skylake-SP or Cascade Lake) with a sustained all core Turbo CPU clock speed of up to 3.1 GHz, and deliver up to 20% improvement in price/performance compared to M4 instances. M5 instances provide support for the Intel Advanced Vector Extensions 512 (AVX-512) instruction set, offering up to 2x the FLOPS per core compared to the previous generation M4 instances. M5n and M5dn instances feature 2nd generation Intel Xeon Scalable Processors (Cascade Lake) with a sustained all-core Turbo CPU frequency of 3.1 GHz. In addition to AVX-512, there is support for the new Vector Neural Network Instructions (AVX-512 VNNI) which will help speed up typical machine learning operations like convolution and inference. M5zn instances offer up to 45% higher compute performance over EC2 M5 instances, delivering the fastest Intel Xeon Scalable processors available in the cloud, with an all-core turbo frequency up to 4.5 GHz. M5a and M5ad instances feature the AMD EPYC 7000 series processor with an all core turbo clock speed of up to 2.5 GHz. M5a instances offers up to 10% savings for customers who are looking to further cost optimize their Amazon EC2 compute environments.

_{*VNNI may not be compatible with all Linux distributions. Please check documentation before using.}

M5n, M5dn, and M5zn instances leverage the fourth generation of custom Nitro card and Elastic Network Adapter (ENA) device to deliver up to 100 Gbps of network throughput to a single instance. These instances offer 4x the network bandwidth and packet processing compared to the base M5 instances and are ideal for network intensive applications. Customers can also enable Elastic Fabric Adapter (EFA) on 12xlarge, 16xlarge, 24xlarge and .metal sizes of m5n and m5dn, and 6xl, 12xl and .metal sizes of M5zn instances for low and consistent network latency.

Local NVMe-based SSD block level storage physically connected to the host server is available on all M5d, M5dn, and M5ad instances. These instances are a great fit for applications that need access to high-speed, low latency local storage including those that need temporary storage of data for scratch space, temporary files, and caches.

M5 instances are built on the AWS Nitro System, a rich collection of building blocks that offloads many of the traditional virtualization functions to dedicated hardware. By doing so, the AWS Nitro System enables high performance, high availability, and high security while also reducing virtualization overhead.