List AWS instance types using boto3

Question

I need to list all the instance types that are provided by AWS using boto. I could've used a static list of instances but it doesn't seem a good solution because the instance types might change in future.

Answer 1

There is no official API call to retrieve Instance Types available in each region.

However, you can retrieve and parse the AWS Price List API, which is really a set of static JSON/CSV files that contain pricing for each Instance Type in each Region.

You'll be amazed at how many pricing combinations there are -- the master EC2 price file is 130MB!

Answer 2

Depending on what you're looking for, http://www.ec2instances.info/ has a CSV of the basic machine types. It is not an official Amazon reference. However, I've found it to be kept up to date very well. This information certainly does change but not so often that you couldn't live with a static list for a little while.