AWS raises GPU prices 15% on a Saturday, hopes you weren't paying attention

Summary

I've been tracking AWS for a long time, with a specific emphasis on pricing. "What happens if AWS hikes prices" has always been something of a boogeyman, trotted out as a hypothetical to urge folks to avoid taking dependencies on a given provider. Over the weekend - on a Saturday, no less - that hypothetical became real. AWS has quietly raised prices on its EC2 Capacity Blocks for ML by approximately 15 percent. The p5e.48xlarge instance – eight NVIDIA H200 accelerators in a trenchcoat – jumped from $34.61 to $39.80 per hour across most regions, while the p5en.48xlarge climbed from $36.18 to $41.61. Customers in US West (N. California) face steeper hikes, with p5e rates rising from $43.26 to $49.75. The change had been telegraphed: AWS's pricing page noted (and bizarrely, still does) that "current prices are scheduled to be updated in January, 2026," though the company neglected to mention which direction. This comes about seven months after AWS trumpeted "up to 45% price reductions" for GPU instances - though that announcement covered On-Demand and Savings Plans rather than Capacity Blocks. Funny how that works. For the uninitiated, Capacity Blocks are AWS's answer to "I need guaranteed GPU capacity for my ML training job next Tuesday." You reserve specific GPU instances for a defined time window – anywhere from a day to a few weeks out – and pay up front at a locked-in rate. It's popular with companies doing serious ML work who can't afford to have a training run interrupted because spot capacity evaporated. The pricing should make it abundantly clear that the people using this aren't hobbyists; these are teams with budgets measured in millions. An Amazon spox told us via email, "EC2 Capacity Blocks for ML pricing vary based on supply and demand patterns, as described on the product detail page. This price adjustment reflects the supply/demand patterns we expect this quarter." To be clear, AWS has raised prices before, but rarely as a straight increase to a line i...