AWS Fargate vs Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling comparison

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling and AWS Fargate are both solutions in the Compute Service category. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.8, while AWS Fargate is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.4. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling holds a 11.2% mindshare in CS, compared to AWS Fargate’s 15.3% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of AWS Fargate users who would recommend it.

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

Read 44 Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling reviews

1,879 Views
1,662 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

AWS Fargate

Read 16 AWS Fargate reviews

3,943 Views
2,331 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

AWS Fargate

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

AWS Fargate and Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling compete in the cloud computing space, with each offering unique advantages. AWS Fargate is praised for its convenience and scalability without the need for server management, making it attractive for teams lacking deep DevOps skills. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling stands out for its flexibility and high availability, which are crucial for dynamic environments requiring precise server management and scaling.

Features: AWS Fargate offers a serverless compute engine for containers with self-managed scaling, ideal for variable workloads. It integrates seamlessly with other AWS services and enables ease of scaling without managing underlying infrastructure. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling provides significant elasticity, allows custom configurations of networks and VPCs, and integrates with load balancers for high availability. It scales resources based on demand and uses a pay-as-you-go pricing model, adding value to its flexibility.

Room for Improvement: AWS Fargate has higher costs and is complex to set up for smaller clients or those needing detailed infrastructure control, presenting challenges in multi-container support and integration with current setups. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling, while stable, faces challenges with complex pricing and configuration setups. There are constraints when independently scaling resources and a demand for clearer documentation and improved support for vertical scaling.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: AWS Fargate is mostly used in Public Cloud setups, offering ease of deployment due to its simplicity and automated services. Customer support is generally satisfactory, though proactive engagement is noticed more in premium plans. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling is flexible for both Public and Private Cloud deployments, though support experiences are mixed, indicating potential for better personalized assistance and clearer guidance.

Pricing and ROI: AWS Fargate is regarded as costlier, especially for startups on tight budgets; however, it delivers a positive ROI for scalable operations. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling is generally seen as more cost-effective than alternatives like Azure, with a pay-as-you-go model supporting varied workload needs efficiently, though complex pricing outlines often require strategic management for optimal outcomes.

To learn more, read our detailed AWS Fargate vs. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

AWS Fargate vs. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

January 2025

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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

2nd

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

8.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

AWS Fargate

Ranking in Compute Service

4th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Compute Service category, the mindshare of Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling is 11.2%, down from 11.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS Fargate is 15.3%, down from 16.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Compute Service

Featured Reviews

Erick Karanja

Technical Lead at Cellulant Kenya

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.

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Subrata Mukherjee

Senior Technical Architect; Head of Platform at Blenheim Chalcot IT Services India

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…

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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 eliminates the need for hardware. We can choose what we need and pay as we use it. It is flexible and can integrate with any product."

"Service for launching or terminating Amazon EC2 instances, with good scalability and stability."

"Sometimes, Auto Scaling is more beneficial, and sometimes, Reserved Instances are preferred, especially for longer-term usage."

"I like the fact that you don't need to pay for it when you aren't using it, especially in a disaster recovery scenario. The pricing is transparent, so you know what you're going to pay for it."

"The solution incorporates ease of maintenance and reduction in operational overhead and costs. Patching is also easy."

"Most of what I've deployed are CI/CD pipelines. AWS is scalable. You can always increase or adjust the resources to meet the specific requirements. I also like choosing an instance in any location, preferably the closest one. We don't have any AWS locations in South Africa, but the latency is about the same as hosting in Europe."

"Having a load balancer in between is very helpful when you have huge traffic."

"Can handle traffic spikes so the system doesn't overload."

More Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling pros

"AWS Fargate is a fully managed service, and it's very easy to use compared to other services like Elastic Beanstalk Service (EBS)."

"The most valuable feature of AWS Fargate is its ease of use."

"If you create your deployment with a good set of rules for how to scale in, you can just set it and forget it."

"All AWS services allow me to manage a wide range of applications and services."

"Fargate itself is a stable product. We are quite satisfied with its performance."

"Fargate's integration with other AWS services is really good."

"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."

"We appreciate the simple use of containers within this solution, it makes managing the containers quick and easy."

More AWS Fargate pros

Cons

"It's an expensive solution."

"It should work for the cloud, cloud monitoring features, and DevOps processes. It should automatically enable features for downscaling and upscaling."

"Scalability can be improved."

"The price could always be a bit better."

"We have found that the sizing in Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling is far off. For example, we will see some at one terabyte and the other one is two terabytes. There is nothing between one and two terabytes. Sometimes it's a struggle if I need one and a half, I still am supposed to pay for two. There are five terabytes, six terabytes, and 12 terabytes, and if I need something at eight or nine, I'm still paying 30 to 40 percent more by taking the one which is 12 terabytes. Microsoft Azure does similar sizes but the gap can be more, such as six terabytes, and the next one is 12 terabytes."

"What could be improved in Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling is its fees."

"Sometimes the configuration is not intuitive."

"When creating a new instance there is a set of questions that have to be answered, and this is something that can be simplified."

More Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling cons

"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."

"I would like to see the older dashboard instead of the newer version. I don't like the new dashboard."

"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."

"There is a tool named Compose that helps in converting the Docker Compose file into a Kubernetes file. For ECS and Fargate, AWS reads a Dockerfile and helps with conversion. However, I am uncertain if it's ready for deployment after conversion."

"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."

"AWS Fargate could improve the privileged mode containers. We had some problems and they were not able to run."

"We faced challenges in vertically scaling our workload."

More AWS Fargate cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licences for this solution are based on the number of instances. This determines the EC2 type that is used and this is then priced accordingly."

"Compared to the performance, the price is quite high. I would rate it a ten because it is expensive. There are additional costs including bandwidth costs, data transfer costs, and load balancing costs."

"I rate Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling's pricing a seven out of ten."

"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."

"The solution's licensing is based on a pay-as-you-go model. You only pay for the resources you use, whether it's RAM, processing power, or storage. So, it's calculated based on the time you use those resources, typically billed in hours or minutes."

"The price of this product could be a little bit lower."

"The solution is less expensive than a few competitors."

"The product is expensive."

More Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling pricing and cost advice

"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."

"I rate the price of AWS Fargate a four out of five."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

22%

Computer Software Company

16%

University

Government

Financial Services Firm

23%

Computer Software Company

14%

Government

Comms Service Provider

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...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling?

The pricing structure from AWS is really complex and depends on factors like the region and specific services used. Prices can vary significantly even within the same service across different locat...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling?

There is a need for improvement in understanding the pricing structure, as it is complex and depends on several factors such as the location of data centers.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What needs improvement with AWS Fargate?

There is a tool named Compose that helps in converting the Docker Compose file into a Kubernetes file. For ECS and Fargate, AWS reads a Dockerfile and helps with conversion. However, I am uncertain...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering AWS Fargate?

I rate Fargate ten out of ten. The most significant advantage is the unified configuration for all containers deployed by ECS, allowing seamless integration with services like OpenAI or Google Gemi...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 23% of the time

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Compared 7% of the time

Apache NiFi vs Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

Compared 4% of the time

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Amazon EC2 vs AWS Fargate

Compared 14% of the time

Heroku vs AWS Fargate

Compared 13% of the time

Oracle Compute Cloud Service vs AWS Fargate

Compared 7% of the time

Apache NiFi vs AWS Fargate

Compared 6% of the time

Apache Spark vs AWS Fargate

Compared 6% of the time

More AWS Fargate Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

February 2025

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Buyer's Guide

AWS Fargate

February 2025

Download AWS Fargate product report

Also Known As

AWS RAM

No data available

Overview

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling helps you maintain application availability and allows you to automatically add or remove EC2 instances according to conditions you define. ... Dynamic scaling responds to changing demand and predictive scaling automatically schedules the right number of EC2 instances based on predicted demand.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

A new compute engine that enables you to use containers as a fundamental compute primitive without having to manage the underlying instances. With Fargate, you don’t need to provision, configure, or scale virtual machines in your clusters to run containers. Fargate can be used with Amazon ECS today, with plans to support Amazon Elastic Container Service for Kubernetes (Amazon EKS) in the future.

Fargate has flexible configuration options so you can closely match your application needs and granular, per-second billing.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers

Buyer's Guide

AWS Fargate vs. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

January 2025

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