Using EC2 vs Lightsail for consistent compute heavy workloads

Question

I've been using Lightsail for a consistent compute heavy workload and it's (for the most part) always in the "burstable" zone when I have "burstable" credit. If I use an EC2 instance instead, will I be able to use the whole vCPU?

For example, when the Lightsail instance (2 vCPU and 4GB RAM) is running the workload, it's generally around 40% of CPU according to the Lightsail metrics and running `top` in the terminal, which places it in the "burstable" zone. And then, from my limited understanding, it seems like it gets throttled until the total vCPU consumption is within the baseline once the "burstable" credit is exhausted.

If I switch to an EC2 instance, will I be throttled similarly, or will I be able to sustain something like 90% of 1 vCPU?

Answer

A burst type instance type with the same performance as Lightsail would have a similar CPU transition.  
In the case of EC2, you can choose the instance type, so it is better to change to the appropriate one depending on the application workload.

Answer

You can choose to run a burstable EC2 instance like T3 or T2 in "unlimited" mode so it doesn't ever throttle.  However if your workload is regularly taking the instance into the burst zone then it would be more cost effective to run so other instance class like M, C or R depending on the balance you need between CPU and memory.  You can run these at whatever % CPU you want without extra costs.

Using EC2 vs Lightsail for consistent compute heavy workloads

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