Yesterday I read somewhere (don't remember where) that we can cancel reserved instances and get the refund for unused period. A 14% penalty will be charged for the unused period.
As far as I remember, it was somewhere in AWS documentation itself. I'm not able to find it now.
Appreciate if someone could direct me to the source.
From Exchanging Convertible Reserved Instances - Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud:
You can exchange one or more Convertible Reserved Instances for another Convertible Reserved Instance with a different configuration, including instance family, operating system, and tenancy. There are no limits to how many times you perform an exchange, as long as the target Convertible Reserved Instance is of an equal or higher value than the Convertible Reserved Instances that you are exchanging.
Please note that this only applies to Convertible Reserved Instances, not non-Convertible RIs. Convertible RIs cost more, but provide this benefit.
Alternatively, you can use the Reserved Instance Marketplace:
The Reserved Instance Marketplace is a platform that supports the sale of third-party and AWS customers' unused Standard Reserved Instances, which vary in term lengths and pricing options.
...
AWS charges a service fee of 12 percent of the total upfront price of each Standard Reserved Instance you sell in the Reserved Instance Marketplace.
