Differences Between Reboot, Stop, and Terminate

Differences Between Reboot, Stop, and Terminate

The following table summarizes the key differences between rebooting, stopping, and terminating your instance.

Characteristic	Reboot	Stop/start (Amazon EBS-backed instances only)	Terminate
Host computer	The instance stays on the same host computer	The instance runs on a new host computer	None
Private and public IP addresses	These addresses stay the same	EC2-Classic: The instance gets new private and public IP addresses EC2-VPC: The instance keeps its private IP address. The instance gets a new public IP address, unless it has an Elastic IP address (EIP), which doesn't change during a stop/start.	None
Elastic IP addresses (EIP)	The EIP remains associated with the instance	EC2-Classic: The EIP is disassociated from the instance EC2-VPC: The EIP remains associated with the instance	The EIP is disassociated from the instance
Instance store volumes	The data is preserved	The data is erased	The data is erased
Root device volume	The volume is preserved	The volume is preserved	The volume is deleted by default
Billing	The instance billing hour doesn't change.	You stop incurring charges for an instance as soon as its state changes tostopping. Each time an instance transitions from stopped to running, we start a new instance billing hour.	You stop incurring charges for an instance as soon as its state changes toshutting-down.

Note that operating system shutdown commands always terminate an instance store-backed instance. You can control whether operating system shutdown commands stop or terminate an Amazon EBS-backed instance.