Amazon Web Services (AWS) has significantly hiked up prices for its P5e EC2 instances Capacity Blocks.

As reported by The Register, the company increased pricing for some of its instances by approximately 15 percent.

The instances impacted include the p5e.48xlarge and the p5en.48xlarge, both of which feature eight Nvidia H200 GPUs. Pricing increases have varied by region, with The Register noting that customers in the US West region in particular saw steeper hikes, with rates rising from $43.26 to $49.75.

While AWS' pricing page did note that the prices would be updated in January 2026, it did not specify whether it would be an increase or a decrease.

A 15 percent growth is a significant price shift, with customers using large numbers of instances set to see a significant hit on their AWS bill.

The increase also comes less than a year after AWS announced it was cutting the costs of several instances by up to 45 percent - including the H200 instances recently increased.

The cuts came in June 2025, and saw the P4d (A100), P4de (A100), P5 (H100), and P5en (H200) getting a reduction in on-demand pricing. In particular, the P5en was reduced by 25 percent "on demand." At the time, AWS said: "Regular price reductions on AWS services have been a standard way for AWS to pass on the economic efficiencies gained from our scale back to our customers."

That sentiment seems at odds with the company now increasing the instance cost, though Capacity Blocks differ in structure from on-demand access.

An AWS spokesperson told DCD: " EC2 Capacity Blocks for ML pricing are dynamic and 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. AWS’s commitment to not raise pricing on fixed pricing models like On Demand and Savings Plans remains unchanged.” The Register notes that price increases have occurred in the past, but rarely as a "straight increase to a line item."

Not all sentiment on the matter is shared, however. Gartner VP analyst Lydia Long argued on LinkedIn: "AWS has always been clear that Capacity Blocks are dynamically priced, so this is no more an anomaly than Spot Pricing fluctuations are."

AWS made the P5e instances with H200s generally available in September 2024, the H100s in July 2023, and the newest Blackwell generation in May 2025.