AWS Instance Explorer 🚀

A beautiful, animated web app showing all AWS EC2 & RDS instance types with workload suitability reasoning.

Zero dependencies. Zero AWS keys. Zero backend. Just open index.html.

Quick Start

open index.html

Or push to GitHub → Settings → Pages → main branch → live site.

Features

• 🎨 Premium dark UI with glassmorphism & animations
• ⚡ 181 EC2 instance types across 16 families
• 🗄️ 54 RDS instance classes across 4 families
• 🛢️ 7 database engines with reasoning
• 🧠 "Best For" / "Not Ideal For" guidance per family
• 🔍 Search & filter by category
• 📱 Fully responsive

Why No AI? Why No AWS Keys?

Instance type suitability is public, well-documented AWS knowledge — not a secret behind an API wall. Every spec, every use case is published in AWS documentation. We baked it all into a static data.json. No server, no credentials, no API calls needed.

Project Structure

├── index.html              # Main page
├── static/
│   ├── css/style.css       # Design system
│   ├── js/app.js           # Frontend logic
│   └── data.json           # All instance data (auto-updated)
├── .github/
│   ├── workflows/
│   │   └── update-data.yml # GitHub Actions workflow
│   └── scripts/
│       └── update_data.py  # AWS data fetcher
└── README.md

Auto-Update Setup (GitHub Actions)

The project includes a GitHub Actions workflow that automatically fetches the latest AWS instance data and pricing every Monday at midnight UTC (or manually via workflow dispatch).

Setup Instructions

1. Create an AWS IAM User with read-only permissions:

   • Go to AWS Console → IAM → Users → Create User
   • Attach policies: AmazonEC2ReadOnlyAccess, AmazonRDSReadOnlyAccess, AWSPriceListServiceFullAccess
   • Create access keys (Access Key ID + Secret Access Key)

2. Add AWS Credentials to GitHub Secrets:

   • Go to your GitHub repo → Settings → Secrets and variables → Actions
   • Add two secrets:
     • AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID: Your AWS access key ID
     • AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY: Your AWS secret access key

3. Enable GitHub Actions:

   • Go to Actions tab → Enable workflows
   • The workflow will run automatically every Monday or can be triggered manually

4. Manual Trigger (optional):

   • Go to Actions → "Refresh AWS Instance Data" → Run workflow

Alternative: OIDC Setup (More Secure)

For production, use OIDC instead of access keys:

1. Create an IAM role with the same permissions
2. Configure GitHub as an OIDC provider in AWS
3. Update the workflow to use role-to-assume instead of access keys
4. See AWS docs for details