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What's the Difference Between AWS Local Zones and AWS Outposts Rack?

Compare AWS Local Zones and AWS Outposts Rack side by side — features, pricing, and ideal use cases to help you choose the right product.

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Comparisons
AWS Local Zones
AWS Outposts Rack
Category

Compute, Edge Computing

Compute, Hybrid
Description

Infrastructure to deploy latency-sensitive workloads near end users

Fully managed 42U rack with AWS compute, storage, and networking for on-premises deployment.
Best for
  • Media content creation
  • Real-time gaming
  • Live video streaming
  • Machine learning inference
  • On-premises AWS
  • Data residency
  • Low-latency processing
  • Local data processing
Key features
  • Low-latency compute
  • VPC extension
  • Multiple services available
  • Direct Connect support
  • Metro-area deployment
  • Full 42U rack
  • EC2 instances
  • EBS volumes
  • S3 on Outposts
  • ECS/EKS support
Pricing model

Pay for underlying resources used

3-year term; all-inclusive pricing
Free tier

No

No
Expert take

“Local Zones bring AWS infrastructure to metro areas for single-digit millisecond latency to end users. Deploy the same APIs and services without managing edge hardware.”
— Oleksii Bebych, re:Post Top Contributor [profile]

“Outposts Rack delivers full AWS rack infrastructure to your data center. It supports EC2, EBS, S3, EKS, ECS, and RDS locally with the same APIs as the Region.”
— Oleksii Bebych, re:Post Top Contributor [profile]
Product page

Learn more about AWS Local Zones »

Learn more about AWS Outposts Rack »

When to use AWS Local Zones or AWS Outposts Rack

Use AWS Local Zones when:

  • Media content creation
  • Real-time gaming
  • Live video streaming
  • Machine learning inference

Learn more about AWS Local Zones »

Use AWS Outposts Rack when:

  • On-premises AWS
  • Data residency
  • Low-latency processing
  • Local data processing

Learn more about AWS Outposts Rack »

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