Why cloud providers stopped auctioning compute: The $999 spot instance incident
lauriewired · x · 2026-08-19
A historical anecdote on why cloud providers stopped using uniform price auctions for spot instances. Before 2017, EC2 Spot Instances allowed users to bid high (e.g., $999.99/hr) to avoid interruptions while paying the lower clearing price. On September 26, 2011, enough users gamed the system that the clearing price for m2.2xlarge in us-east actually jumped to $999.99/hr for two hours. To avoid such bidding games, no major cloud provider uses a pure auction market for spot instances today.
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