# /aws/instance_families/search

`POST /api/aws/instance_families/search`

Price: 10 credits

Search the EC2 instance-family catalog AWS publishes on its instance-types pages. Each entry names one family, its workload category, the marketing title and heading, the description of what the family is built for and which processor and networking it uses, the link to its specification page and the date it was announced. Narrows by family, by category and by free text over the title, heading and description.

## How to use it

This is the catalog of families — `m5`, `g5`, `c7g` — not of sizes; for the vCPU and memory of a particular size call aws/instances with the full type name. Several entries can point at one family page, so `family` is not unique across the catalog. AWS publishes the category with inconsistent casing and stray spacing, which `category` normalises while `category_raw` keeps as delivered.

## Parameters

- `access-token` (string, required)

## Request body

- `timeout` (integer) — Max scrapping execution timeout (in seconds) (default: 300; min: 20; max: 1500)
- `family` (string, nullable) — Keep only the card for this instance family, matched case-insensitively (examples: "m5", "g5", "c7g"; minLength: 1)
- `category` (string, nullable) — Keep only families in this workload category, matched case-insensitively and ignoring the inconsistent casing AWS publishes (examples: "General Purpose", "Accelerated Computing", "Memory Optimized"; minLength: 1)
- `text` (string, nullable) — Keep only families whose title, heading or description contains this text (examples: "Graviton", "SAP"; minLength: 1)
- `count` (integer, required) — Max number of results to return (min: 1)

## Response

### 200 — Successful Response

- `@type` (string) (default: "AwsInstanceFamily")
- `id` (string, required)
- `family` (string, nullable)
- `product_title` (string, nullable)
- `heading` (string, nullable)
- `category` (string, nullable)
- `category_raw` (string, nullable)
- `summary` (string, nullable)
- `summary_html` (string, nullable)
- `url` (string, nullable)
- `published_at` (string, nullable)
- `created_at` (string, nullable)
- `updated_at` (string, nullable)

## Errors

### 422 — Validation Error

The request body did not validate

What to do: Check the fields against this schema. A URN with the wrong prefix is the most common cause.

- `detail` (array)
  - `loc` (array, required)
  - `msg` (string, required)
  - `type` (string, required)
  - `input` (any)
  - `ctx` (object)

### 408

The request ran past its time limit

What to do: Raise `timeout` in the request body, up to the maximum this endpoint documents. Lowering `count` or turning off the `with_*` flags also helps, because less work finishes sooner.

### 412

No instance family matched the filters.

What to do: Retrying will not help: either the entity does not exist, or the input points at a different one.

### 429

Too many requests: a rate limit or a usage window is exhausted

What to do: When the response carries an X-Retry-After header, wait that many seconds and retry: the same number is in the body as `detail.retry_after`, and the limit clears once that window passes. The message in the body names the limit that was hit.

### 500

Something broke on our side

What to do: Retrying will not help. If it keeps happening, send us the X-Request-ID from the response headers.

### 529

Rate limit reached, or the endpoint is overloaded

What to do: Wait at least 30 seconds, then retry.

## Response envelope

Success: Array of objects (may be empty if no results)

Error: Error may coexist with partial results if it occurs mid-execution. Check X-Error header and status code.

Every response carries these headers:

- `X-Error` — Error message text (present only on error)
- `X-Request-ID` — Unique request identifier
- `X-Execution-Time` — Execution time in seconds
- `X-Result-Count` — How many records the body carries. 0 means an empty result, which is a normal answer and not by itself an error. A non-zero count can come back together with X-Error when the failure happened partway through — read this header and X-Error independently.
- `X-Total-Available-Results` — How many records exist for this query, when the endpoint can say. On a `dry_run` request this is the answer and the body is empty. It saturates: the endpoint's documented maximum means 'at least that many', any smaller number is exact.
- `X-Warning` — Present when the request body carried keys this endpoint does not document. They were ignored, so any filter you meant to apply through them did not apply. Check the spelling against this schema and retry.
- `X-Retry-After` — Seconds to wait before retrying. Present only on 429.