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AWS Fargate vs Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling
Ranking in Compute Service
3rd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.2
Number of Reviews
46
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
AWS Fargate
Ranking in Compute Service
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Compute Service category, the mindshare of Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling is 10.8%, down from 12.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS Fargate is 14.7%, down from 17.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Compute Service
 

Featured Reviews

Erick  Karanja - PeerSpot reviewer
Scaling is as easy as hitting a button and setup is straightforward
AWS has already made improvements. In the past, if you provisioned a large EC2 instance and underutilized it, you still paid a premium. Now, AWS encourages using Kubernetes, where you primarily pay for the compute power you actually use in production. There is room for improvement. You might end up paying a high price if you're not careful and you provision a server that's underutilized. AWS has left it to engineers to figure out solutions. If you find the cost too high, you can move to Kubernetes, which might be a better solution for you than large EC2 instances. So, the improvements need to come from the user side, not the provider. Software engineers and engineering teams need to know their limits with EC2 instances. They need to recognize when it's time to transition their applications to Kubernetes. This means building with the cloud in mind from the start, making it easier to move solutions to the cloud without suffering upgrades and integration issues.
Subrata Mukherjee - PeerSpot reviewer
Boost demand response with cost-efficient serverless architecture
We are a venture builder company, and if we select AWS for our product. Our design is based on a serverless architecture model. ECS Fargate is the most convenient way in terms of scalability, integration, and cost control Thanks to the serverless model and easy integration features, a few…

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The most useful feature is elasticity. You can scale up or down based on traffic."
"It's good performance-wise."
"The product is flexible."
"The solution incorporates ease of maintenance and reduction in operational overhead and costs. Patching is also easy."
"With the ability to set up rules based on demand, network, or traffic, the service offers a necessary level of adaptability."
"One of the most important benefits is that a company can optimize resources because Auto Scaling deploys resources when needed. For example, for Black Friday, a company can deploy 100 servers for a couple of days. When Black Friday is over, the company can delete those servers."
"The product’s most valuable feature is the seamless resizing of web connection."
"The integration capabilities are good."
"Fargate is beneficial for hosting our solutions and providing workflow management, creating legal documents, and delivering business intelligence."
"AWS Fargate is a fully managed service, and it's very easy to use compared to other services like Elastic Beanstalk Service (EBS)."
"I like their containerization service. You can use Docker or something similar and deploy quickly without the know-how related to, for example, Kubernetes. If you use AKS or Kubernetes, then you have to have the know-how. But for Fargate, you don't need to have the know-how there. You just deploy the container or the image, and then you have the container, and you can use it as AWS takes care of the rest. This makes it easier for those getting started or if you don't have a strong DevOps team inside your organization."
"AWS Fargate is an easy-to-use tool to simplify setup. You only pay for the resources you use. If you need to quickly create, delete, or scale applications without managing resources like EC2 instances, Fargate is the best service to use."
"All AWS services allow me to manage a wide range of applications and services."
"The most valuable feature of Fargate is that it's self-managed. You don't have to configure your own clusters or deploy any Kubernetes clusters. This simplifies the initial deployment and scaling process."
"We appreciate the simple use of containers within this solution, it makes managing the containers quick and easy."
"AWS Fargate automatically scales to meet demand, making it ideal for applications with variable workloads."
 

Cons

"The primary area for improvement is the pricing model."
"If your EC2 instance doesn't boot up, you're in the dark about what's happening. It would be amazing if you could get a view of the console to see the status. There's something called the AWS Console, which is a web portal. I would like to see a virtual screen of an instance that hasn't started properly, so I can see where it crashed."
"There is room for improvement. You might end up paying a high price if you're not careful and you provision a server that's underutilized."
"Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling can provide more discounts when using the machines the solution uses."
"It should work for the cloud, cloud monitoring features, and DevOps processes. It should automatically enable features for downscaling and upscaling."
"The solution's pricing is expensive. You pay based on how much you use it, like paying for the time or hours you use the service. There's no need to buy hardware separately."
"The licensing cost is expensive."
"The technical support needs to be improved."
"I would like to see enhanced faster application scaling and better integration with the elastic file system to unify storage volumes and improve the launch time of instances."
"Challenges include higher costs for smaller clients, limited control over underlying infrastructure customization, and potential latencies during task startup."
"Service computing is not as straightforward compared to other computing services. It requires more effort to use effectively."
"AWS Fargate could improve the privileged mode containers. We had some problems and they were not able to run."
"We would like to see some improvement in the process documents that are provided with this product, particularly for auto-scaling and other configuration tools that are a bit complicated."
"I heard from my team that it's not easy to predict the cost. That is the only issue we have with AWS Fargate, but I think that's acceptable. AWS Fargate isn't user-friendly. Anything related to Software as a Service or microservice architecture is not easy to implement. You're required to have DevOps from your side to implement the solution. AWS Fargate is just a temporary solution for us. When we grow to a certain level, we may use AKS for better control."
"Sometimes, Fargate can be really hard to configure."
"If there are any options to manage containers, that would be good. That relates more to the cost point. For example, over the next three months, I'll be making a comparison between solutions like CAST AI and other software-as-a-service platforms that offer Kubernetes management with an emphasis on cost reduction."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is quite expensive."
"As far back as I can remember, I have experience with two types of subscriptions. The first was my personal AWS base, and the second was a corporate license. I can't say much about the corporate license, but I recall they sent the bill every month for the personal subscription, though I could be mistaken."
"I rate Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling's pricing a seven out of ten."
"The solution is not expensive."
"The product is cheap."
"I have not explored the price of the solution extensively, but from what I have seen the price is alright."
"The solution pricing varies by service region is mid-range."
"The price of this product could be a little bit lower."
"I rate the price of AWS Fargate a four out of five."
"We would advise that this solution has a slightly-higher price point than others on the market. There is a free plan available for start-ups, but the free and lower range licensing models do not provide the full functionality."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
26%
Computer Software Company
15%
Government
7%
Real Estate/Law Firm
6%
Financial Services Firm
25%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling?
The solution removes the need for hardware. We can easily create servers or machines. Just by clicking or specifying our requirements, like memory size or disk space, it's set up for us. The tool e...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling?
The pricing of Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling is moderate. It's not too expensive because we only pay for what we use. While there are cheaper options, the services provided are worth the cost. Previously...
What needs improvement with Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling?
While Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling is continually updated and has improved over time, the dashboard has become more complex and tricky for new users. The interface was easier to navigate in earlier vers...
What do you like most about AWS Fargate?
The most valuable feature of Fargate is that it's self-managed. You don't have to configure your own clusters or deploy any Kubernetes clusters. This simplifies the initial deployment and scaling p...
What needs improvement with AWS Fargate?
The monitoring capabilities of AWS Fargate could be improved and made more robust. The error handling aspect sometimes causes issues and can get stuck during deployment, making the process not very...
What advice do you have for others considering AWS Fargate?
I would recommend AWS Fargate as an alternative to AWS Lambda for running loads or hosting a service. It is a good service for keeping instances running, which minimizes initial latency. Overall, I...
 

Also Known As

AWS RAM
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Fargate vs. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
848,716 professionals have used our research since 2012.