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AWS Lambda vs Amazon EC2 comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on May 21, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
6.3
Amazon EC2 cuts costs, boosts efficiency, reduces downtime, and enhances innovation compared to on-premise infrastructure.
Sentiment score
6.8
AWS Lambda offers cost savings and high ROI through its pay-as-you-go model, auto-scaling, and serverless infrastructure.
I would say I have saved more than a week with Amazon EC2 compared to my previous on-premises setup.
Architect at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.8
Amazon EC2 support is responsive and efficient, with high ratings, though some face integration challenges requiring partner assistance.
Sentiment score
6.8
AWS Lambda support is efficient and knowledgeable, but some users find cost a barrier for higher service levels.
I would rate technical support from Amazon a 10, as we have on-prem AWS experts.
Consultant at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
When we raise a ticket or have an issue, the support team is responsive.
Co Founder And CTO at Gamucopia Creatives
If it is a priority issue, they will give the response quicker, but if it is moderate, they take some time.
Consultant at Deloitte
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Amazon EC2's scalability and flexibility in resource adjustment are highly rated, though some concerns with older instance types exist.
Sentiment score
7.7
AWS Lambda efficiently scales with demand, offering seamless serverless operations, integration with AWS services, but may become costly.
When it comes to the increased needs of my customers trying to grow, AWS Lambda is not an issue to grow with them.
Assistant Manager at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Whenever the number of requests increases, the system automatically scales up to the target we have set and scales down once the requests are resolved.
Co Founder And CTO at Gamucopia Creatives
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Amazon EC2 is stable and reliable, boasting 99.99% uptime, auto-recovery, and minimal downtimes with proper configuration.
Sentiment score
8.1
AWS Lambda is highly stable, reliable, and integrates well, though limited by timeout constraints, rated 8-9 for stability.
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon EC2 users seek cost-effective solutions with better scalability, integration, support, security, and platform compatibility improvements.
AWS Lambda users desire improved integration, user-friendliness, language support, execution speed, monitoring, setup, customization, and computational capabilities.
I have heard from multiple people that if you have an Amazon EC2 instance running and you stop it, the billing continues unless you terminate the Amazon EC2 instance.
Senior Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
I think improvements can be made to Amazon EC2 by increasing the memory, offering more instance types, and including GPUs as mentioned in the keynote.
Architect at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
The price for Amazon EC2 could be lower; it's not cheap, so when we want something cheaper, we do go serverless if we can.
Consultant at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
Regarding scaling, we can add up to 1,000 execution environments for every 10 seconds per function, per region.
Consultant at Deloitte
AWS Lambda needs to improve cold start time.
Co Founder And CTO at Gamucopia Creatives
 

Setup Cost

Amazon EC2 pricing varies by usage, offering flexible models but can be costly for large deployments despite competitive options.
AWS Lambda offers cost-effective, pay-per-use pricing, ideal for low-traffic workloads, with potential cost escalation if unmonitored.
 

Valuable Features

Amazon EC2 offers scalability, cost efficiency, security, and flexibility with easy provisioning and seamless AWS integration for diverse workloads.
AWS Lambda provides serverless architecture, automatic scaling, seamless integrations, cost efficiency, and simplified deployment for efficient application development.
With the cloud, deployment is easy, and within a minute, we can deploy the server and give it to the developers so they can work on it right away after deployment.
Architect at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
The main benefits Amazon EC2 provides for me as an end user are cost savings, as they are more OpEx costs rather than CapEx for us.
Consultant at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
Amazon EC2 offers flexibility.
Senior Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
Automatic scaling is a valuable feature. When the number of requests increases, the system automatically scales up to the target we have set and scales down once the requests are resolved.
Co Founder And CTO at Gamucopia Creatives
As it is serverless, AWS Lambda has more scope for building scalable architectures.
Consultant at Deloitte
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon EC2
Ranking in Compute Service
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
72
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
AWS Lambda
Ranking in Compute Service
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
91
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Compute Service category, the mindshare of Amazon EC2 is 13.0%, up from 5.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS Lambda is 13.4%, down from 21.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Compute Service Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
AWS Lambda13.4%
Amazon EC213.0%
Other73.6%
Compute Service
 

Featured Reviews

BS
AWS Architect at Corvit Networks
Elasticity and auto scaling enhance performance and cost efficiency
Amazon EC2 features that I have found the most valuable and useful include elasticity and scalability, a variety of instance types, pay-as-you-go pricing, security, isolation, AMIs, integration with other services, Spot Instances, and high availability of reliability, user data, and EC2 metadata. These include Amazon EC2 images, image builder, and auto scaling as instance types, pricing models, and security with VPC, IAM roles, and security groups. The most beneficial features of Amazon EC2 for cloud operations are EC2 Auto Scaling with Elastic Load Balancing, which allows scale up and scale down, maintains high availability, and optimizes costs. Auto Scaling provides fault tolerance, performance optimization, and cost efficiency. A real-world benefit is that an instance automatically handles the load. When traffic drops, it reduces the number of instances. Other highly beneficial Amazon EC2 features include Spot Instances, multiple instance types, custom AMIs, VPC security groups, strong network and access security, and Elastic IPs, which are the static IPs for dynamic instances.
Rajaraman Ramachandran - PeerSpot reviewer
Co Founder And CTO at Gamucopia Creatives
Has enabled us to manage compute resources efficiently while supporting multiple languages
AWS Lambda needs to improve cold start time. Some AWS Lambda functions require a cold start, and if you need AWS Lambda to provide quick responses, you need some of the AWS Lambdas to be always on, which is risky. We need AWS Lambda's cold start time to be reduced so that we can use it much faster than now. We need a better way to handle the cold start. We should be able to start AWS Lambda much before in a predictable way instead of just calling and then having it start.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Marketing Services Firm
13%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Marketing Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Outsourcing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise28
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business35
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise44
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon EC2?
The scalability and elasticity are helpful.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon EC2?
Advice on Setup Cost, Pricing, and Licensing for EC2: 1. Start Small & Use Free Tier if Possible For new users or small applications, the AWS Free Tier offers limited EC2 usage free for 12 mont...
What needs improvement with Amazon EC2?
I think improvements can be made to Amazon EC2 by increasing the memory, offering more instance types, and including GPUs as mentioned in the keynote. In the future, I think you could explore quant...
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...
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.
What needs improvement with AWS Lambda?
AWS Lambda needs to improve cold start time. Some AWS Lambda functions require a cold start, and if you need AWS Lambda to provide quick responses, you need some of the AWS Lambdas to be always on,...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, EC2
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Netflix, Expedia, TimeInc., Novaris, airbnb, Lamborghini
Netflix
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Lambda vs. Amazon EC2 and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
886,077 professionals have used our research since 2012.