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 #3 with an average rating of 8.8, while AWS Lambda is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.5. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling holds a 10.5% mindshare in CS, compared to AWS Lambda’s 21.3% 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 46 Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling reviews

1,507 Views
1,275 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

AWS Lambda

Read 88 AWS Lambda reviews

3,782 Views
2,037 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

AWS Lambda

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 2025

AWS Lambda and Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling both cater to server management without direct infrastructure oversight, competing in the cloud services domain. Lambda has the upper hand due to its serverless structure and lower operational costs, which appeal to developers seeking agility and scalability.

Features: AWS Lambda offers a serverless architecture that simplifies deployment without the need to manage infrastructure, supports multiple programming languages, and ensures scalability. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling focuses on resource management through automatic capacity adjustment to maintain performance, providing flexibility and high availability for traffic spikes.

Room for Improvement: AWS Lambda can improve its external integration capabilities, enhance security, and address cold-start delays. It also needs a broader language support range and an enhanced user interface. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling users express concerns about its pricing structure, particularly for unoptimized scaling usage. There's a call for improved technical support and better setup documentation.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: AWS Lambda is praised for its straightforward deployment in public cloud environments, though users note variability in technical support quality. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling is also easy to deploy but needs improvements in technical support, with users seeking more intuitive guidance during deployment.

Pricing and ROI: AWS Lambda's pay-per-use model makes it cost-effective for fluctuating workloads, offering strong ROI by minimizing server maintenance costs. It is generally inexpensive for small applications. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling has a flexible usage-based pricing model, yielding cost savings if well-managed but can become costly with continuous scaling, impacting ROI if not optimized.

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

Buyer's Guide

AWS Lambda vs. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

April 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 850,671 peers since 2012

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

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

AWS Lambda

Ranking in Compute Service

1st

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Compute Service category, the mindshare of Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling is 10.5%, down from 13.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS Lambda is 21.3%, up from 21.4% 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.

Read full review

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We use the solution to increase CPU and memory size."

"The solution includes many features for configuring networks and VPCs."

"The initial setup is straightforward."

"We appreciate that this solution allows us to run all of our severs through it, meaning that our workloads are mainly on the EC2 instance only."

"The auto-scaling feature is particularly useful. Additionally, CloudWatch and CloudTrail are also important features for us."

"Applications deployed on EC2 instances can easily integrate with other AWS services. For example, you can connect your EC2 Auto Scaling group to a tool like CloudWatch for health checks and anomaly detection."

"The most valuable features are that it is stable, flexible, and reliable."

"Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling has good integration."

More Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling pros

"The initial setup is pretty easy."

"The programming language and the integration with other AWS services are the most valuable features."

"It is a scalable solution."

"What I like best about AWS Lambda is that it's feature-rich, and I appreciate that. I also like that it's stable and supports many languages."

"It's also suitable for companies of any size. For example, we're a large enterprise, and we've used Lambda without any problems in the last 10 months."

"What I like most about AWS Lambda is that it's very easy to deploy."

"It's a fairly easy solution to learn."

"The automation feature is valuable."

More AWS Lambda pros

Cons

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

"The product's setup is complex for an intermediate user."

"The licensing cost is expensive."

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

"Automation is very hard."

"Its stability and scalability need improvement."

"It's an expensive solution."

"The product should improve vertical scaling features."

More Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling cons

"I wish to see better execution time in the next release."

"There's room for improvement in the solution's warm start, which refers to the minimum time it takes to start up a Lambda function if you haven't been running it."

"It currently requires manual user maintenance to upgrade and evaluate, and an automated provision for this would be beneficial."

"I would like to see improvements in AWS Lambda's stability and setup processes, as there were some complexities encountered initially."

"The automation with other Amazon products could be better."

"Lamba functions have cold-starts that can cause some delay."

"Its price should be improved. Its pricing is on the higher side. I am not sure if it currently supports the Go language. If it doesn't support the Go language, they can introduce it."

"AWS Lambda has some size limitations in the code line, you can't do a couple of functions to do the job."

More AWS Lambda cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Amazon EC2 instances can be very expensive."

"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."

"AWS offered some credits, so we have been able to enjoy some of those benefits. The pricing was fair."

"The pricing is not fixed and it is based on usage."

"The solution is not expensive."

"The solution pricing varies by service region is mid-range."

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

"Pricing could be a little bit more competitive."

More Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling pricing and cost advice

"The solution follows a pay-as-you-go licensing model, which results in cost savings."

"I think the price is okay. However, if they add more functionality, they can have better prices. In fact, they should have better and more flexible packages for clients who have greater consumption of Lambda."

"AWS Lambda cost is pretty decent."

"The solution's price is average."

"AWS Lambda is a cheap solution."

"Lambda is a good and cheap solution and I would recommend it to those without a huge payload."

"The pricing varies based on the specific solution you're implementing, and in comparison to the value it provides, the overall cost is reasonable."

"Price-wise, AWS Lambda is very cheap. It's not free, but it's not that expensive."

More AWS Lambda pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Compute Service solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

850,671 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

27%

Computer Software Company

15%

Government

Real Estate/Law Firm

Educational Organization

67%

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 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...

See all answers

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...

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?

The pricing of AWS Lambda is reasonable. It's beneficial and cost-effective for users regardless of the number of instances used.

See all answers

Comparisons

AWS Fargate vs Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

Compared 67% of the time

AWS Batch vs Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

Compared 6% of the time

Apache NiFi vs Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

Compared 6% of the time

More Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling Competitors

AWS Batch vs AWS Lambda

Compared 53% of the time

Apache NiFi vs AWS Lambda

Compared 18% of the time

Apache Spark vs AWS Lambda

Compared 11% of the time

Amazon EC2 vs AWS Lambda

Compared 4% of the time

Google Cloud Dataflow vs AWS Lambda

Compared 3% of the time

More AWS Lambda Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

May 2025

Download Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling product report

Buyer's Guide

AWS Lambda

May 2025

Download AWS Lambda 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)

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.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers

Netflix

Buyer's Guide

AWS Lambda vs. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

April 2025

Free Report: AWS Lambda vs. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Lambda vs. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

850,671 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our AWS Lambda vs. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling report.

See our list of best Compute Service vendors.

We monitor all Compute Service reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.