Amazon Lightsail review
by Amazon Web ServicesCloud servers (VPS)
AWS virtual servers sold as fixed monthly bundles with SSD, transfer and an IPv4 address, from $5 a month or $3.50 IPv6-only, with daily automatic snapshots billed by storage.
- Free trial
- Self-serve
- Usage-based
- Public prices
What you're paying for
- Easy to adopt (main value)
- Built-in reach
A fixed-price AWS server: 2 vCPUs, 4 GB, 80 GB SSD, 4 TB of transfer and an IPv4 address for $24 a month, with a path to Amazon EC2.
Lightsail packages an AWS server into a monthly bundle with SSD, transfer, an IPv4 address and a firewall, priced the same in every region, so a small project does not have to assemble EC2, EBS and data transfer pricing. Automatic daily snapshots cost only their storage, private networking to other AWS resources is free, and snapshots can be exported to Amazon EC2. Sign-in uses AWS IAM with MFA, IAM Identity Center and CloudTrail. It suits small projects that may later grow into the wider AWS platform.
- One price per bundleEach bundle has one monthly price with SSD, transfer and IPv4 included, billed hourly up to that price; the price file shows the same hourly rate in all 19 regions.Evidence: Lightsail pricing page and AWS price file (2026-10-16)
- Path to Amazon EC2Instance snapshots can be exported to Amazon EC2 as an AMI and EBS snapshot in the same region, and private IPs reach other AWS resources at no charge.Evidence: Lightsail export docs and FAQ (2026-10-16)
- Snapshots billed by storageAutomatic daily snapshots keep the latest 7 and cost only $0.05 per GB-month, charged for the data that changed since the previous snapshot.Evidence: Automatic snapshot docs and billing FAQ (2026-10-16)
- AWS sign-in and auditIAM users, MFA with passkeys or security keys, SAML through IAM Identity Center at no extra charge, and CloudTrail event history of 90 days of console and API calls.Evidence: IAM, Identity Center and CloudTrail docs (2026-10-16)
- Best for
- Small projects and side apps that want one fixed AWS price and may move to EC2 later.
- Good to know
- Lightsail is not on AWS's SOC, ISO, PCI or HIPAA scope lists, and outbound overage is $0.09 per GB in US regions.
How Amazon Lightsail compares
Against 3 other products we reviewed in Cloud servers (VPS): what you pay for with each, the five access facts, the plan limits we recorded and each review's bottom line. The note under the table says how each one was checked.
| Metric | Amazon Lightsail | Akamai Cloud (Linode) | DigitalOcean Droplets | Vultr Cloud Compute |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| What you're paying for | Easy to adoptA fixed-price AWS server: 2 vCPUs, 4 GB, 80 GB SSD, 4 TB of transfer and an IPv4 address for $24 a month, with a path to Amazon EC2. | Worth the priceA 2 vCPU, 4 GB Linode for $24 a month with 4 TB of pooled transfer, overage at $0.005 per GB and ISO 27001 coverage for compute. | Worth the priceA 2 vCPU, 4 GiB server with 4,000 GiB of pooled transfer and a public IPv4 address for $24 a month, billed per second and capped at 672 hours. | Worth the priceA 2 vCPU, 4 GB, 80 GB server for $20 a month with 3 TB of pooled transfer, backed by Vultr's own SOC 2 Type II report and ISO 27001. |
| Overall score | 5.6 | 6.7Best | 6.6 | 6.6 |
| Free option | Free trial | Free trial | Free trial | Free trial |
| Card to start | –Not measured | Card required | Card required | Card required |
| Getting access | Self-serve | Self-serve | Self-serve | Self-serve |
| Starter priceCheapest paid plan | $3.50/mo | $5/mo | $4/mo | $2.50/mo |
| Pricing model | Usage-based | Usage-based | Usage-based | Usage-based |
| Pricing page | Public prices | Public prices | Public prices | Public prices |
| Reference server | Linux General Purpose: 2 vCPU (burstable), 4 GB, 80 GB SSD, 4 TB transfer, $24/mo with IPv4 | Linode 4 GB: 2 vCPU (shared), 4 GB, 80 GB SSD, 4 TB transfer, $24/mo | Basic Regular: 2 vCPU (shared), 4 GiB, 80 GiB SSD, 4,000 GiB transfer, $24/mo | Regular Performance: 2 vCPU (shared), 4 GB, 80 GB SSD, 3 TB transfer, $20/mo |
| Reference scenario (US, monthly) | $28: $24 plan + $4 for one 80 GB snapshot, computed | $29: $24 plan + $5 Backups add-on, computed | $28.80: $24 plan + $4.80 weekly backups, computed | $24: $20 plan + $4 backups (20%), computed |
| Billing | Hourly up to the monthly bundle price | Hourly, rounded up, capped at the monthly price; G8 plans and extra IPv4 uncapped | Per second, 60-second minimum, capped at 672 hours a month | Hourly, 1-hour minimum, capped at 672 hours; VX1 and GPU at 730 hours |
| Transfer overage | $0.09/GB in US regions; inbound counts toward the allowance; pooled per plan and region | $0.005/GB (North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific); pooled; inbound free | $0.01/GiB in every region; pooled across the team; inbound free | $0.01/GB; pooled across the account with 2 TB free; inbound free |
| Public IPv4 | Included in IPv4 bundles; IPv6-only bundles $1.50 to $4 less | One per Linode included; extra addresses need justification, price not listed | Included on bundled plans; reserved IPv4 $5/mo when unassigned | One included; reserved IP $3/mo; extra addresses for an unlisted fee |
| Backups | Automatic daily snapshots, latest 7 kept, billed as snapshot storage (Linux only) | Priced per plan ($2 to $5/mo at small sizes); daily, weekly and biweekly copies | Weekly 20% or daily 30% of the Droplet price; usage-based from $0.01/GiB | 20% of the server price; daily to monthly schedules; two most recent kept |
| Snapshots | $0.05/GB-month, incremental | One manual snapshot in Backups; captured images $0.10/GB-month | $0.06/GB-month | $0.05/GB-month of compressed size |
| Free credit | $100 in AWS credits, up to $100 more, Free plan up to 6 months | $100 for new customers via promo page or referral, payment method required | $5 for 90 days, payment method required | Coupon credit up to $300 (up to 30 days); free tier server by application |
| Dedicated vCPU from | Not offered (burstable plans) | $36/mo (G6 Dedicated 4 GB) or $43 (G7) | $42/mo (CPU-Optimized, 2 vCPU, 4 GiB, 25 GiB) | $28/mo (CPU Optimized, 1 vCPU, 2 GB); 2 vCPU, 4 GB at $40 |
| Image export | Snapshot export to Amazon EC2 only; no download or import | No backup download; raw .img image upload up to 6 GB | No snapshot download; custom image import (raw, qcow2, VHDX, VDI, VMDK) | No snapshot download; ISO and raw image import from a URL |
| SOC 2 / ISO 27001 | Lightsail not listed in AWS SOC or ISO scope | SOC 2 Type 1 for compute; ISO 27001:2022 covers compute | SOC 2 Type II; own ISO 27001 not stated | SOC 2 Type II (with HIPAA) in the console; ISO 27001:2022 |
| HIPAA BAA | Lightsail not on the HIPAA eligible services list | On request; compute listed in HIPAA scope | Through sales or support | By contract, after an architecture review |
| EU regions | Frankfurt, Ireland, Paris, Stockholm, Spain (opt-in) | Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Paris, Milan, Madrid, Stockholm | Amsterdam, Frankfurt (London in the UK) | Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Paris, Madrid, Stockholm, Warsaw, Milan |
| Spend cap | AWS Budgets alerts; project spend limits that pause resources only in AWS's new sign-up experience, which is in limited release | None; transfer emails at 80, 90 and 100% | Spend alerts only | None self-serve; bandwidth usage emails |
| Bottom line | From its public pages, Lightsail is a simple way to a fixed-price AWS server, with snapshots billed by storage and an export path to EC2. It is not on AWS's compliance scope lists, and transfer beyond the allowance costs $0.09 per GB. | From its public pages, Akamai Cloud keeps Linode's clear plan list and adds low-cost pooled transfer ($0.005 per GB over the allowance), ISO 27001 for compute and free support. Compute has a SOC 2 Type 1 report, and G8 plans are billed without a cap. | From its public pages, DigitalOcean is a predictable choice for small servers: IPv4 included, a monthly cap, pooled transfer at $0.01 per GiB and backups at a flat share of the price. Images cannot be downloaded, and new accounts start with limits. | From its public pages, Vultr has the lowest list price for the reference server and a broad compliance file with free SSO. Some regional prices are missing from the pricing page, and several pages disagree on details such as DDoS protection. |
Evidence: Amazon Lightsail: facts checked 2026-10-16 from its public sign-up and pricing pages, no completed hands-on run; Akamai Cloud (Linode): facts checked 2026-10-16 from its public sign-up and pricing pages, no completed hands-on run; DigitalOcean Droplets: facts checked 2026-10-16 from its public sign-up and pricing pages, no completed hands-on run; Vultr Cloud Compute: facts checked 2026-10-16 from its public sign-up and pricing pages, no completed hands-on run. Prices in USD as listed, excluding tax. "–" means not recorded.
Score
- Pricing clarity
- 4.0 / 10, Fair
- scenario plan priced in USD; hourly rule and monthly cap stated; US transfer overage published; IPv4 charge stated; pricing page examples describe a $5 plan with 1 GB, 40 GB and 2 TB, while the $5 plan card lists 0.5 GB, 20 GB and 1 TB; the FAQ gives the cheapest plan as $0.0047/hour, the billing FAQ as $0.0067/hour with an example at $0.0046; the FAQ overage table and half-allowance list cover fewer regions than the pricing page and price file; the billing FAQ offers new customers a free month of the $15 database plan but says short-term free trials, database plans included, are no longer available; Free Tier credit expiry is 6 months in some FAQ answers and 12 months in another answer and the terms; the Free Tier FAQ says most sign-ups need no payment method, while the account guide's standard sign-up cannot continue without one
- Free credit and trial
- 7.0 / 10, Good
- $100 in AWS credits at sign-up and up to $100 more, on a Free plan of up to 6 months; pages disagree on whether a card is needed; not billed automatically when it ends; no promo code or link needed
- Price of the reference server
- 7.3 / 10, Good
- $28/mo: Linux General Purpose 4 GB with public IPv4 (2 vCPU, 80 GB SSD) $24; IPv4 included; backups $4; no transfer overage; automatic daily snapshots billed as snapshot storage, one full 80 GB snapshot at $0.05/GB-month; 4 TB of transfer included; assumes inbound transfer, which also counts toward the allowance, stays within the remaining 2 TB; later daily snapshots add only changed data, which the pages cannot size
- Transfer terms
- 5.0 / 10, Fair
- $0.09/GB over the allowance in the US; 4 TB included on the scenario plan; pooled only across the same plan in a region; inbound free but counted toward the allowance; overage billed, server not cut off
- Backups, cost control and exit
- 6.0 / 10, Good
- automatic backups priced, daily available; snapshot or image storage $0.05/GB-month; no image download or self-serve import; spend alerts, no hard cap; data kept 30 days after closing
- Compliance and account security
- 4.5 / 10, Fair
- no SOC 2 Type II for the product, no ISO 27001 for the product, no HIPAA BAA for the product, self-serve DPA, EU region, 2FA, self-serve SSO, audit log
Review
Review from public pages
Written from Amazon Lightsail's public pages (pricing, security or privacy, and docs) as read on Oct 16, 2026. We did not sign up, and no hands-on run is published yet.
What the public pages show
We read the Lightsail pricing page and the price file it loads, the Lightsail FAQ and billing FAQ, the Lightsail docs on bundles, regions, automatic snapshots, snapshot export, static IPs, instance deletion and CloudTrail, the AWS Free Tier page, FAQ and terms, the AWS account sign-up guide, the AWS compliance scope lists (SOC, ISO, PCI, HIPAA and others), the GDPR center, the IAM, Identity Center and Budgets docs, and the AWS Customer Agreement on Oct 16, 2026; we did not sign up, create an instance or call the API for this review. All prices are in US dollars.
The bundle model is simple: each plan has one monthly price with vCPUs, memory, SSD and transfer, billed hourly up to that price, and the price file shows the same hourly rate in every region. Stopped instances are billed until deleted. IPv6-only bundles cost $1.50 to $4 less than the same size with IPv4. All plans are burstable; there is no dedicated vCPU option. Inbound and outbound transfer both count toward the allowance, and allowances are pooled only across instances of the same bundle in a region.
Several pages disagree. Pricing-page examples describe plan sizes that differ from the plan cards, the two FAQs give different hourly rates for the cheapest plan, the Free Tier pages give credit expiry as 6 or 12 months, and the Free Tier FAQ says most sign-ups need no payment method while the account guide's standard sign-up cannot continue without one. We also checked AWS's compliance scope lists: Lightsail is not on the SOC, ISO, PCI or HIPAA lists.
Strengths
- Same price in every region
The price file shows each bundle at the same hourly rate in all 19 regions; some regions include half the transfer allowance.
Compared: Hetzner Cloud prices its US plans higher than its EU plans.
- Snapshots priced by storage
Automatic daily snapshots keep the latest 7, cost $0.05 per GB-month and charge only for changed data.
- A Free plan that stops instead of billing
New AWS accounts get $100 in credits and up to $100 more; when the Free plan ends, the account is suspended rather than switched to paid, and data is kept 90 days.
Compared: DigitalOcean's $5 credit and Akamai Cloud's $100 credit convert to paid billing when they end.
- AWS identity and audit tools
IAM users and policies, MFA with passkeys, SAML sign-in through IAM Identity Center at no extra charge, and 90 days of CloudTrail event history.
Things to know
- Not in AWS compliance scope
Lightsail is not on AWS's SOC, ISO 27001, PCI or HIPAA eligible service lists; only the Korea CSAP list includes it.
Workaround: Workloads that need those reports can export snapshots to Amazon EC2, which is on the SOC and ISO lists.
- Transfer overage at $0.09 per GB
Outbound transfer over the allowance is $0.09 per GB in US and EU regions and up to $0.17 in Sydney, and inbound counts toward the allowance.
- No dedicated vCPU or image import
All plans are burstable, custom image or ISO import is not described, and the system disk cannot be detached.
- Plans are not resized in place
Moving to a larger plan means taking a snapshot and launching a new, larger instance from it.
Pricing reality
Bundles are priced per month and billed hourly up to that price. For our scenario, the Linux bundle with 2 vCPUs, 4 GB, 80 GB SSD, 4 TB of transfer and a public IPv4 address is $24 a month, and automatic snapshots cost $0.05 per GB-month; counting one full 80 GB snapshot, that is $4, so $28 a month (computed). Later daily snapshots add only changed data. The 2 TB of outbound transfer fits in the 4 TB allowance, but inbound counts too, and overage is $0.09 per GB in US regions. The same size without IPv4 is $20. Block storage is $0.10 per GB-month, a load balancer $18 and an unattached static IP $0.005 an hour. AWS Business Support+ starts at $29 a month.
Exit path
Instance snapshots can be exported to Amazon EC2 as an AMI and an EBS snapshot in the same region; automatic snapshots cannot be exported directly, and some blueprint snapshots cannot be exported at all. No download format is described. A root-volume snapshot can become a block storage disk attached to another instance. After closing, the AWS Customer Agreement lets you retrieve content for 30 days if all amounts are paid.
Compared with
- Pick Amazon Lightsail when
- You want the same price in every region, a Free plan that stops rather than bills, and a path to Amazon EC2.
- Pick DigitalOcean Droplets when
- You want pooled transfer at $0.01 per GiB, a SOC 2 Type II report and a HIPAA BAA path.
- Pick Amazon Lightsail when
- You want AWS identity tools, CloudTrail and snapshots that export to EC2.
- Pick Akamai Cloud (Linode) when
- You want overage at $0.005 per GB, ISO 27001 for compute and a HIPAA BAA on request.
- Pick Amazon Lightsail when
- You want the same published price in every region, a free start that suspends rather than bills when it ends, and a path to Amazon EC2.
- Pick Vultr Cloud Compute when
- You want a lower scenario price ($24, computed), a SOC 2 Type II report and ISO 27001.
Choose it if
- You want one fixed monthly price for a small server, the same in every region.
- You expect to move to Amazon EC2 or use other AWS services later.
- You want a free start that suspends instead of billing when it ends.
Look elsewhere if
- Your security review asks for SOC 2, ISO 27001 or a HIPAA BAA for the server.
- Your servers send a lot of data beyond the allowance.
- You need dedicated vCPUs.
Bottom line
From its public pages, Lightsail is a simple way to a fixed-price AWS server, with snapshots billed by storage and an export path to EC2. It is not on AWS's compliance scope lists, and transfer beyond the allowance costs $0.09 per GB.
Plan limits at a glance
| Limit | As recorded |
|---|---|
| Reference server | Linux General Purpose: 2 vCPU (burstable), 4 GB, 80 GB SSD, 4 TB transfer, $24/mo with IPv4 |
| Reference scenario (US, monthly) | $28: $24 plan + $4 for one 80 GB snapshot, computed |
| Billing | Hourly up to the monthly bundle price |
| Transfer overage | $0.09/GB in US regions; inbound counts toward the allowance; pooled per plan and region |
| Public IPv4 | Included in IPv4 bundles; IPv6-only bundles $1.50 to $4 less |
| Backups | Automatic daily snapshots, latest 7 kept, billed as snapshot storage (Linux only) |
| Snapshots | $0.05/GB-month, incremental |
| Free credit | $100 in AWS credits, up to $100 more, Free plan up to 6 months |
| Dedicated vCPU from | Not offered (burstable plans) |
| Image export | Snapshot export to Amazon EC2 only; no download or import |
| SOC 2 / ISO 27001 | Lightsail not listed in AWS SOC or ISO scope |
| HIPAA BAA | Lightsail not on the HIPAA eligible services list |
| EU regions | Frankfurt, Ireland, Paris, Stockholm, Spain (opt-in) |
| Spend cap | AWS Budgets alerts; project spend limits that pause resources only in AWS's new sign-up experience, which is in limited release |
Read from the vendor's public pages on Oct 16, 2026. No hands-on run is published yet. How we check
We have not published a sign-up run for Amazon Lightsail yet. The access facts above were read from its sign-up and pricing pages on Oct 16, 2026.
We have not published API calls for Amazon Lightsail yet.
Amazon Lightsail lists 4 plans. The cheapest paid plan, Linux 512 MB (IPv6 only), costs $3.50/mo.
- Amazon LightsailLowest priceLinux 512 MB (IPv6 only)$3.50/mo$0.0047/hour; no public IPv4
- 2 burstable vCPUs, 512 MB, 20 GB SSD
- 1 TB of transfer
- Amazon LightsailLinux 512 MB with IPv4$5/mo$0.00672/hour
- 2 burstable vCPUs, 512 MB, 20 GB SSD
- 1 TB of transfer
- Public IPv4 included
- Amazon LightsailLinux 4 GB with IPv4$24/mo$0.03225/hour; $20 IPv6-only; the plan used in our scenario
- 2 burstable vCPUs, 4 GB, 80 GB SSD
- 4 TB of transfer, inbound and outbound counted
- Public IPv4 included
- Automatic snapshots $0.05/GB-month
- Amazon LightsailCompute-optimized Large 4 GB$42/mo$38 IPv6-only
- 2 vCPUs, 4 GB, 160 GB SSD
- 5 TB of transfer
Prices as listed, USD, excluding tax; observed 2026-10-16.
Source: aws.amazon.com pricing page. Prices change; the observed date above is when our agent read them.