Today, we’re excited to announce the availability of Spot Instances on IBM Cloud Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)—a new pricing option that enables customers to run interruption-tolerant workloads at up to 75% lower cost compared to on-demand virtual servers.
Spot Instances unlock the value of unused IBM Cloud compute capacity, giving customers access to the same performance and profiles they expect from on-demand VSIs, at a fraction of the price—ideal for elastic, scalable, and fault-tolerant workloads.
What Are Spot Instances?
Spot Instances (also known as preemptible instances) allow customers to consume unused IBM Cloud VPC compute capacity at significantly discounted rates. In exchange for the lower price, these instances can be preempted with a 30-second warning notice when capacity is required elsewhere.
With Spot Instances, customers get:
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Up to 75% discount compared to on-demand VSIs
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Same performance as on-demand instances
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Support for existing Flex profiles and select GPU profiles
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Ability to define preemption behavior:
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Stop instance
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Stop and delete instance
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Built-in graceful shutdown notification to trigger automation or save state
This model enables customers to balance cost and flexibility without compromising on infrastructure quality.
Why Spot Instances on IBM Cloud?
Many modern workloads don’t require guaranteed uptime on every node. CI/CD pipelines, batch analytics, machine learning training, rendering jobs, and big data processing can all tolerate interruptions when architected correctly.
Spot Instances help customers:
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Scale compute-intensive workloads without scaling costs
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Stay within budget while maintaining production-grade performance
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Adopt cloud-native, fault-tolerant architectures
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Compete cost-effectively with other hyperscalers’ spot offerings
Designed for Real-World Cloud Workloads
Spot Instances are a strong fit for teams that already use automation and elasticity, including:
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CI/CD and Dev/Test environments
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Batch processing and analytics jobs
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Machine learning training and experimentation
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Rendering, simulation, and compute-heavy pipelines
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Containerized and stateless workloads
Customers can launch new Spot-compatible instances or convert existing stopped VSIs by simply enabling the Spot toggle during instance configuration.
Enterprise-Ready by Design
Unlike traditional preemptible compute offerings, IBM Cloud Spot Instances are built on IBM Cloud VPC, inheriting its enterprise-grade security, isolation, compliance, and networking capabilities. This makes Spot Instances suitable even for regulated industries when used with the right workload patterns.
Spot Instances bring IBM Cloud to feature parity with other hyperscalers’ discounted compute models, while continuing to differentiate through hybrid cloud support, compliance controls, and flexible instance profiles.
Availability
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Initial availability: January 20, 2026 (Allowlisting required)
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General availability: First half of 2026
Get Started with Spot Instances
Early access is available upon request via this form. Once enabled, customers can easily launch Spot Instances from the IBM Cloud console by selecting a Spot-compatible CPU or GPU profile and enabling Spot behavior during provisioning.
To learn more about Spot Instances, supported profiles, pricing, and best practices, visit the IBM Cloud documentation or start exploring Spot Instances in the IBM Cloud VPC console today.