We study the relation between large N instantons and conventional instantons, focusing on matrix models and topological strings. We show that the resurgent properties of the perturbative series at fixed but arbitrary N, including the replica limit N = 0, can be obtained from large N instantons. In the case of topological strings, it has been conjectured that the resurgent structure encoded by large N instantons is closely related to the spectrum of BPS states. We give direct evidence for this connection in the case of Seiberg-Witten theory and other topological string models, and we show in detail how the resurgent properties at fixed N follow from the large N theory, and therefore can be used to obtain information on BPS invariants.
