Privacy Policy

Effective date: August 13, 2026

InstanceFinder ("we", "our", "us") operates the website instancefinder.com, a reference tool that lists cloud compute instance types and pricing. This policy explains what data is collected when you visit, why, and the choices you have. We keep data collection to a minimum: the site has no user accounts and no sign-up, and does not ask you to submit any personal information. The one place you can send us text is the optional AI-assisted sizing search on the cross-cloud finder, described below.

Information we collect automatically

Like most websites, our content-delivery network (Amazon CloudFront) records standard server access logs for each request. These logs include your IP address, browser type and user agent, the pages and files you request, the referring page, and the date and time of the request. We use these logs only to operate and secure the site, diagnose problems, prevent abuse, and understand aggregate traffic. Access logs are retained for approximately 90 days and then automatically deleted. We also collect non-identifying operational metrics (such as cache-hit rate, latency, and error rates) via Amazon CloudWatch.

We do not build advertising or behavioral profiles of you from our server logs.

Analytics

We use Google Analytics 4 to understand aggregate, non-identifying usage — which pages are visited, how visitors arrive, and general device information and approximate (city-level) location that Google derives from your IP address without storing it. Google Analytics sets cookies or similar identifiers to recognize repeat visits. We use this only to improve the site's content and performance; we do not use it to build advertising or behavioral profiles of you.

For visitors in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland, we do not set analytics cookies at all: analytics storage is denied by default in those regions and Google Analytics runs in a consent-aware, cookieless mode that measures aggregate traffic without storing an identifier on your device. You can opt out of Google Analytics on any site by installing the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on.

Information stored in your browser

Your filter and column selections are stored in the page URL so a view is shareable, and your light/dark theme preference is stored in your browser's local storage. This information stays on your device and is not transmitted to us as personal data.

AI-assisted sizing search

The cross-cloud finder has an optional search box where you can describe the software you plan to run, in your own words. It is entirely opt-in: the rest of that page works without it, and nothing is sent anywhere unless you type something and submit it.

When you do submit it, the text you typed is sent to our own server (an AWS Lambda function). There it is passed to Amazon Bedrock to identify which software products you named, and product names are then looked up against Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Web Search to find the vendor's published system requirements. Both are Amazon services running in our AWS account, in the US East region; your text is not sent to any third-party search engine or AI provider outside AWS.

We do not log the text you type. We store a one-way hash of it as a cache key, together with the result derived from it — the product names and the hardware requirements found for them. That cached result is not linked to you and is reused to answer the same question from anyone, which is what keeps the feature fast and inexpensive. To enforce daily usage limits we also keep a counter against a one-way hash of your IP address, which expires automatically after two days.

Please do not type confidential information into this box. It is a tool for naming off-the-shelf software, and the results are cached and shared. Describe the products, not your organization.

Advertising

We display advertising supplied by TinyAdz. When you open a page, a script loaded from cdn.apitiny.net requests an ad.

To select an ad, that script sends TinyAdz the address of the page you are viewing, the referring page, your browser window's dimensions, and your device's time zone. As with any request to a server, TinyAdz also receives your IP address and user agent. The script may store a small record in your browser's local storage noting when an ad was last shown, so that the same ad format is not repeated too often; it also loads a further script from the same provider and runs an automated check intended to tell real visitors from bots. We receive only aggregate counts of views and clicks — never information that identifies you.

TinyAdz does not currently publish a privacy policy at a public address. We have asked for one and will link it here when it is available.

Service providers

The site is hosted on Amazon Web Services (Amazon S3 and CloudFront); request logs and content are processed on AWS infrastructure in the United States. Aggregate usage measurement is provided by Google Analytics as described above, and advertising is supplied by TinyAdz as described under "Advertising". These providers process data on our behalf or as independent controllers under their own privacy policies.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have rights over your personal data — for example, under the EU/UK GDPR (access, correction, deletion, restriction, and objection) or the California Consumer Privacy Act / CPRA (to know, delete, correct, and opt out of the "sale" or "sharing" of personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising). Because we do not maintain accounts and hold only limited, short-lived log data, we may be unable to identify you from a request. We do not sell personal information, and we do not authorize our advertising partner to use what it receives to build cross-site behavioral profiles; the data it does receive is listed under "Advertising" above.

Children

InstanceFinder is a technical tool intended for a general, professional audience. It is not directed to children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13 (or under 16 in the EEA).

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. When we do, we will revise the effective date above. Continued use of the site after changes take effect constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.