AWS Fargate vs Amazon EC2 comparison

Amazon EC2 and AWS Fargate are both solutions in the Compute Service category. Amazon EC2 is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.8, while AWS Fargate is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.4. Amazon EC2 holds a 6.3% mindshare in CS, compared to AWS Fargate’s 15.3% mindshare. Additionally, 98% of Amazon EC2 users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of AWS Fargate users who would recommend it.

Amazon EC2

Read 65 Amazon EC2 reviews

1,375 Views
967 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

AWS Fargate

Read 16 AWS Fargate reviews

3,943 Views
2,331 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Amazon EC2

AWS Fargate

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

Amazon EC2 and AWS Fargate compete in the cloud solutions category. AWS Fargate seems to have the upper hand due to its serverless architecture offering simplicity and ease of use, whereas Amazon EC2 is more complex but flexible.

Features: Amazon EC2 offers high performance, versatility, and flexibility, allowing for quick instance creation and efficient resource scaling. It supports diverse operating systems and is highly customizable, which is beneficial for larger deployments. AWS Fargate provides a serverless architecture, allowing for deployment without server management, automatic scaling, and seamless integration with other AWS services, making it ideal for applications with variable workloads.

Room for Improvement: Amazon EC2 faces areas of improvement in terms of complexity, cost management, and integration, as the service can become expensive and challenging to deploy effectively. AWS Fargate could simplify configuration and cost complexity, despite its ease of container management. Both services would benefit from enhanced documentation and support to assist users in overcoming common challenges.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Amazon EC2 is widely deployed in public and hybrid clouds, offering flexibility but sometimes requiring technical support, which varies in responsiveness. AWS Fargate benefits from simple container deployment in public clouds but faces criticisms about technical support consistency. AWS provides comprehensive documentation, though assistance quality can vary depending on the solutions architect assigned.

Pricing and ROI: Amazon EC2 operates on a pay-as-you-go pricing model, which can be cost-efficient if managed well but can lead to unexpected expenses due to its complexity. It is considered more expensive compared to on-prem solutions but can provide substantial ROI through reduced infrastructure and staffing costs. AWS Fargate is generally cost-effective for its serverless advantages but might be costlier for startups with limited budgets. Both solutions offer potential cost savings if used strategically, with EC2 providing significant flexibility and Fargate offering a more managed service approach.

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

Buyer's Guide

AWS Fargate vs. Amazon EC2

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

Ranking in Compute Service

5th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

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 is 6.3%, down from 6.8% 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

KatlegoMabila

Senior AWS Account Manager at Silicon Overdrive

Offers customization and flexibility with great support

Scalability depends on whether the client wants to scale up or scale down. It decreases resources based on demand. The great aspect of scalability is the flexibility to allow business success to optimize resource solutions and cost efficiency. Another crucial aspect of scalability is auto-scaling. When you have the opportunity to auto-scale, it can't always be available for everything. If you have chosen to integrate with auto-scaling, it's marvellous and doesn't require additional effort. Auto-scaling gives you the edge by using the capacity you have efficiently, scaling up or down as needed. These flexibilities within the EC2 feature instances of AWS play a crucial role in helping me utilize AWS EC2 Intelligent efficiently.

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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

"Configuration can be changed at any time and it's very scalable."

"The most valuable feature of Amazon EC2 is its ability to spin a new virtual machine in a few seconds."

"The most valuable feature of Amazon EC2 is the virtual machines that are available."

"The scalability and elasticity are helpful."

"The greatest benefit of Amazon EC2 is its versatility, including the diverse range of servers available and the ability to connect to various resources."

"I would recommend this solution to others who want to start using it."

"The most valuable features of Amazon EC2 are content delivery and adaptability."

"An advantage of Amazon is that it offers a wide range of infrastructure services with an easy way to configure them."

More Amazon EC2 pros

"Fargate is beneficial for hosting our solutions and providing workflow management, creating legal documents, and delivering business intelligence."

"The most valuable feature of AWS Fargate is its ability to run on demand without the constant run time of basic resources."

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

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

"AWS Fargate automatically scales to meet demand, making it ideal for applications with variable workloads."

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

"AWS Fargate has many valuable services. It does the job with minimal trouble. It's very observable. You can see what's going on and you have logs. You have everything. You can troubleshoot it. It's affordable and it's flexible."

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

More AWS Fargate pros

Cons

"Amazon EC2 could improve by reducing the price."

"If the solution was cheaper, if the price was less, it would be better."

"I would like to see as much automation for data validation as possible in the future."

"There should be enhanced accessibility from any standpoint. The accessibility should be increased, particularly in scenarios where accessing the software on the Azure platform from the cloud can be complex. Simplifying this process would be beneficial. There are too many steps involved."

"The customization could be simplified."

"The IP changes whenever we restart which is frustrating."

"They can build automatic features for ENSS or network drive. They have the Control-M feature. Similarly, they should have a feature for the network drive that can be mapped. I have not seen such a feature. They have a lot of products but those are quite costly. There is no cheaper option available for the EC2 instance for syncing two drives. If these features are available, it would be good."

"Amazon EC2 could improve its dashboards and UI, they need to be more user-friendly."

More Amazon EC2 cons

"Sometimes, Fargate can be really hard to configure."

"Challenges include higher costs for smaller clients, limited control over underlying infrastructure customization, and potential latencies during task startup."

"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."

"There are features that could be added or enhanced."

"The main area for improvement is the cost, which could be lowered to be more competitive with other major cloud providers."

"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."

"As I have not worked with Fargate extensively, I do not have any specific improvements."

"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."

More AWS Fargate cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Amazon EC2 could improve. The Google Cloud Platform is more cost-effective."

"The use of Amazon EC2 does not incur any licensing fees."

"The price can be improved."

"The license fee for Amazon EC2 is higher than its competitors."

"There is a license required to use this solution and we pay on a monthly basis."

"I use the free tier, although I have paid for some services that are not free. The overall cost of this solution depends on the services you use."

"It has helped to reduce costs with infrastructure."

"Amazon EC2 is a very expensive solution."

More Amazon EC2 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

Computer Software Company

19%

Financial Services Firm

16%

Retailer

University

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?

The scalability and elasticity are helpful.

See all answers

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

I'm going to mention again that there is quite a bit of complexity within the pricing of EC2 instances. I'm just going to give it six out of ten since there are various standards, upfront and commi...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Amazon EC2?

There is not much to be improved or enhanced. One of the things that need to be looked into is the complex pricing, which is rather intense. Sometimes, clients don't understand the structures. Thes...

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

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Compared 24% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon EC2

February 2025

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Buyer's Guide

AWS Fargate

February 2025

Download AWS Fargate product report

Also Known As

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, EC2

No data available

Overview

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a web service that provides secure, resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It is designed to make web-scale cloud computing easier for developers.

Amazon EC2’s simple web service interface allows you to obtain and configure capacity with minimal friction. It provides you with complete control of your computing resources and lets you run on Amazon’s proven computing environment. Amazon EC2 reduces the time required to obtain and boot new server instances to minutes, allowing you to quickly scale capacity, both up and down, as your computing requirements change. Amazon EC2 changes the economics of computing by allowing you to pay only for capacity that you actually use. Amazon EC2 provides developers the tools to build failure resilient applications and isolate them from common failure scenarios.

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

Netflix, Expedia, TimeInc., Novaris, airbnb, Lamborghini

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers

Buyer's Guide

AWS Fargate vs. Amazon EC2

January 2025

Free Report: AWS Fargate vs. Amazon EC2

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