AWS Lambda vs Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling comparison

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling and AWS Lambda are both solutions in the Compute Service category. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.9, while AWS Lambda is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.5. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling holds a 11.8% mindshare in CS, compared to AWS Lambda’s 20.4% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of AWS Lambda users who would recommend it.

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

Read 44 Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling reviews

2,041 Views
1,813 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

AWS Lambda

Read 83 AWS Lambda reviews

6,833 Views
4,044 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

AWS Lambda

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

AWS Lambda and Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling both compete in the cloud computing category, with Lambda having the upper hand for users seeking serverless solutions, while EC2 is preferred for those requiring robust infrastructure management.

Features: AWS Lambda offers a serverless architecture, cost-efficient scaling, and robust integration capabilities, enabling quick deployments and flexibility in language support. It is ideal for automated, event-driven tasks without infrastructure management concerns. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling provides infrastructure as a service with significant control over deployment, load balancers integration, and elasticity, allowing resources to adjust based on demand, making it stable for traditional applications.

Room for Improvement: AWS Lambda could improve cold start latency, extend execution time limits beyond 15 minutes, and enhance integration with external providers and language support. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling needs enhancements in cost-efficiency, user interface, and integration capabilities, as users find the pricing model complex.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: AWS Lambda is praised for its ease of use and minimal setup, suitable for users with various technical backgrounds, while receiving generally strong customer support. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling, though requiring more initial setup, offers greater control over deployment. Its technical support receives mixed reviews.

Pricing and ROI: AWS Lambda employs a pay-as-you-go model without upfront infrastructure costs, presenting cost efficiency for projects with fluctuating demands. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling’s usage-based pricing can potentially be expensive if not managed well, yet provides significant ROI for businesses needing stable, scalable infrastructure.

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

Buyer's Guide

AWS Lambda 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 Lambda

Ranking in Compute Service

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Compute Service category, the mindshare of Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling is 11.8%, up from 11.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS Lambda is 20.4%, down from 27.0% 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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Wai L Lin O

Cloud Engineer - Supervisor at KBZ Bank

A serverless solution with easy integration features

We use AWS Lambda because it provides a solution for our needs without requiring us to manage our infrastructure. With the tool, we only pay for the resources we use. Additionally, it is straightforward to implement and integrates with other services like API Gateway. The tool's serverless nature has had the most significant impact on our workflow. I find it particularly attractive because it eliminates the need for managing servers. In my previous experience, managing upgrades and updates was quite challenging. The solution's integration process with other AWS services was relatively easy. We primarily use AWS services such as EventBridge for scheduling processes and log management.

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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

"It has the best auto-scaling features."

"The documentation is good."

"The solution is highly scalable."

"The Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling features are simple to use."

"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."

"With the ability to set up rules based on demand, network, or traffic, the service offers a necessary level of adaptability."

"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."

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

More Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling pros

"I like that it's easy to use and maintain. Lambda is good and supports different platforms, so you don't need to worry about language or maintenance."

"I can use the solution to configure and set up all the requirements for testing the application and test code."

"The cool thing about AWS Lambda is that AWS does all the management. For compression, it is all about making the data small and then making it regular size again. We have an encode function and a decode function. AWS Lambda schedules each of those for us. It has a load balancer and all the fancy stuff, depending on the demand. The most valuable part of AWS Lambda is that I only need to write the software. I need to write two functions, and my cloud developer turns them into two AWS Lambda instances. That's it."

"The utilization of containers is particularly beneficial in overcoming the size limitations imposed on Lambda functions which not only allows us to work around these constraints but also contributes to the improvement and maintenance of our code."

"One of the most valuable features of AWS Lambda is the performance. Lambda is very technical and has very high performance, as well as good real-time performance."

"The most valuable feature is that there is no need to implement it in a server because it is a service."

"AWS Lambda's event-driven architecture is highly valuable."

"The ability to scale up and down very quickly helps because we can maintain our system performance and business at a low cost."

More AWS Lambda pros

Cons

"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."

"For future improvements, I suggest focusing on cost reduction."

"The solution could improve by having more automation. Nowadays there is a vast variety of automation. Additionally, infrastructure monitoring could improve."

"The primary area for improvement is the pricing model."

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

"We would like to see improvement in the UI for this solution, so that it is more user-friendly."

"The solution is not cheap."

"The tool must provide proper guidelines to troubleshoot connectivity issues."

More Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling cons

"AWS Lambda has a maximum execution timeout of 15 minutes, which is unsuitable for long-running tasks."

"The first time Lambda is started up, it takes some time to spin up an instance for serving the consumer requests. AWS has been trying to solve this in a variety of ways but have not yet managed to do so."

"Lambda can only be used in one account; there's no possibility to utilize it in another account."

"The way Lambda works with HTTP headers is a bit odd."

"The product could make the process of integration easier."

"There are sometimes issues following an update."

"I have seen some drawbacks with certain integrations."

"We can write anything as code, but the solution will not give proper error information."

More AWS Lambda cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool's pricing is good and not expensive."

"There is no specific pricing for Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling, but we have to pay for the number of machines getting scaled up."

"Its price is affordable for enterprise customers."

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

"The solution is not expensive."

"Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling uses a pay-as-you-go pricing model."

"The product is quite expensive."

"Pricing could be a little bit more competitive."

More Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling pricing and cost advice

"The pricing is on-demand and based on runs or times that are billed out monthly."

"AWS Lambda license is paid on a monthly basis."

"It computes by the cycle, and it's very cheap."

"AWS Lambda cost is pretty decent."

"The solution is free of cost for the first year, and after that, it becomes expensive."

"AWS Lambda is cost-effective, with a minimal maintenance cost."

"AWS Lambda is cheap."

"Lambda is an affordable solution. They offer free requests every month and charge per the compute time. If you are working in a big organization, usually AWS offer a savings plan where you get approximately 70% discount on pricing."

More AWS Lambda pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

22%

Computer Software Company

16%

University

Government

Educational Organization

64%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

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

Which is better, AWS Lambda or Batch?

AWS Lambda is a serverless solution. It doesn’t require any infrastructure, which allows for cost savings. There is no setup process to deal with, as the entire solution is in the cloud. If you use...

See all answers

What do you like most about AWS Lambda?

The tool scales automatically based on the number of incoming requests.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Lambda?

AWS Lambda is cheaper compared to running an instance continuously. You only pay for what you use, making it cost-effective.

See all answers

Comparisons

AWS Fargate vs Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

Compared 68% of the time

AWS Batch vs Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

Compared 6% of the time

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AWS Batch vs AWS Lambda

Compared 53% of the time

Apache NiFi vs AWS Lambda

Compared 14% of the time

Apache Spark vs AWS Lambda

Compared 9% of the time

Google Cloud Dataflow vs AWS Lambda

Compared 5% of the time

AWS Fargate vs AWS Lambda

Compared 3% of the time

More AWS Lambda Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

January 2025

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Buyer's Guide

AWS Lambda

January 2025

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Also Known As

AWS RAM

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Amazon Web Services (AWS)

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.

AWS Lambda is a compute service that lets you run code without provisioning or managing servers. AWS Lambda executes your code only when needed and scales automatically, from a few requests per day to thousands per second. You pay only for the compute time you consume - there is no charge when your code is not running. With AWS Lambda, you can run code for virtually any type of application or backend service - all with zero administration. AWS Lambda runs your code on a high-availability compute infrastructure and performs all of the administration of the compute resources, including server and operating system maintenance, capacity provisioning and automatic scaling, code monitoring and logging. All you need to do is supply your code in one of the languages that AWS Lambda supports (currently Node.js, Java, C# and Python).

You can use AWS Lambda to run your code in response to events, such as changes to data in an Amazon S3 bucket or an Amazon DynamoDB table; to run your code in response to HTTP requests using Amazon API Gateway; or invoke your code using API calls made using AWS SDKs. With these capabilities, you can use Lambda to easily build data processing triggers for AWS services like Amazon S3 and Amazon DynamoDB process streaming data stored in Amazon Kinesis, or create your own back end that operates at AWS scale, performance, and security.

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers

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Buyer's Guide

AWS Lambda vs. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

January 2025

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