&gt;  At AWS, you&#x27;re paying for it to be in your same account, have access to your other AWS resources, etc.<p>You&#x27;re forgetting the biggest part: you&#x27;re also paying for the <i>flexibility</i>. Subject to availability, you can provision and deprovision AWS resources at will, which gives you far greater granularity than you can do with your own hardware.<p>This flexibility enables you to save in the long run if you manager your resources appropriately, but it also comes at a per-unit premium.