RightSpend vs Archera: Two Ways to Cut Commitment Risk

Archera details are as of September 2026, from the Archera public website.

At a glance#

	RightSpend	Archera
What it focuses on	Commitment-Free Discounts on EC2	Planning and buying cloud commitments, with an optional guarantee
Makes the change or recommends it	Manages the discounts for you; it doesn't touch your instances	Recommends plans; once you select one, Archera executes the commitment in your cloud organization
Clouds	AWS only	AWS, Azure and Google Cloud
What it covers	EC2	Reserved Instances, Savings Plans and CUDs, across services such as EC2, RDS, ElastiCache, OpenSearch and DynamoDB
What you commit to	No 1- or 3-year commitment; short-dated discount rungs expire when usage falls	Guaranteed Commitments with terms as short as 30 days; can be released or rebated if usage drops
Pricing model	25% of the net-new savings it generates; you keep 75%	Software free; the guarantee premium is a share of the savings, higher for shorter terms
Price published	Yes: 25%	Percentage not published on the site; per-service pricing needs a login

What Archera does#

Archera’s homepage headline is “Like insurance for your cloud spend”. It offers free tools to plan, buy and manage native Reserved Instances, Savings Plans and committed use discounts across AWS, Azure and Google Cloud. Archera analyses your usage to find where commitments would save money, recommends plans to choose from, and, once you select a plan, executes the commitment directly in your cloud organization.

Its main product is the Guaranteed Commitment. Terms can be as short as 30 days, and if your usage drops, Archera either releases you from the remaining commitment (its Release Guarantee) or gives you cash back for the underused part (its Rebate Guarantee). Archera shows the estimated premium and projected net savings before you buy.

On pricing, Archera says “The software is free” and “Only pay when Guaranteed Commitments save you money.” The guarantee premium is a share of the savings each commitment generates. Shorter terms carry a higher premium, and the premium on 3-year terms is shown as free. The percentage is not published on the site. Archera says its price catalogue can be browsed without an account, but exact per-service pricing needs a login.

What RightSpend does#

RightSpend offers Commitment-Free Discounts on EC2, in a range of 20–55% off on-demand. That is a range, not a promise: where you land depends on your usage. You don’t sign a 1- or 3-year commitment. RightSpend uses short-dated discount rungs, and when your usage falls those rungs expire rather than leaving you paying for capacity you don’t use. RightSpend doesn’t touch your instances. If you leave, the rungs expire and you’re back on on-demand, with no stranded commitment.

The fee is published: 25% of the net-new savings RightSpend generates, so you keep 75%. For example, if RightSpend produces $10,000 of net-new savings in a month, the fee is $2,500 and you keep $7,500. Savings from your own existing Reserved Instances and Savings Plans are not counted, so there is no fee on them. The fee is ongoing and scales with your EC2 use. It is billed monthly through AWS Marketplace. RightSpend is built for teams spending $25K a month or more on EC2.

When to choose Archera#

• You want commitment coverage across AWS, Azure and Google Cloud from one vendor.
• You want to commit on services beyond EC2, such as RDS, ElastiCache, OpenSearch or DynamoDB.
• You would like free planning software, and want to choose term length yourself, trading a higher premium for shorter terms.
• You want native commitments bought and held in your own cloud organization, with a written release or rebate guarantee.

When to choose RightSpend#

• Your commitment question is mainly EC2, and you spend $25K a month or more on it.
• You don’t want to choose, sign or manage any commitment term at all.
• You want the fee stated up front (25% of net-new savings) and want no fee on the savings you already get from your own RIs and Savings Plans.
• You want to buy through AWS Marketplace, with monthly billing.

Using them together#

It rarely makes sense to run two commitment tools on the same EC2 usage, because both would be trying to cover the same baseline. The split that works is by scope. If you use Archera for non-EC2 services or for other clouds, RightSpend can handle EC2, and its fee only counts net-new savings, not savings from commitments you already hold.

Whichever rate tool you choose, it covers the price you pay, not how much you run. CloudFix handles the usage side on AWS.

Run the RightSpend calculator to estimate your EC2 savings and the fee, or read How RightSpend works. More comparisons are on the comparison hub.