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AWS Fargate vs AWS Lambda comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

AWS Fargate
Ranking in Compute Service
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
15
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
83
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Compute Service category, the mindshare of AWS Fargate is 15.7%, down from 15.9% 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

Subrata Mukherjee - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
Wai L Lin O - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"All AWS services allow me to manage a wide range of applications and services."
"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."
"AWS Fargate automatically scales to meet demand, making it ideal for applications with variable workloads."
"Fargate is beneficial for hosting our solutions and providing workflow management, creating legal documents, and delivering business intelligence."
"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 process."
"The most valuable feature of AWS Fargate is its ease of use."
"The automation feature is valuable."
"AWS Lambda's best features are log analysis and event triggering and actioning."
"The most valuable feature is that it scans the cloud system and if they are any security anomalies it triggers an email."
"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."
"Thanks to this solution, we do not need to worry about hardware or resource utilization. It saves us time."
"We moved our users into the Amazon Cognito pool, so it helps us to standardize our security practices, approaches, etc. We can customize Lambda for authentication to integrate it with API Gateway and other services."
"They have the built-in IDE, so everything happens without integration issues."
"I can use the solution to configure and set up all the requirements for testing the application and test code."
 

Cons

"AWS Fargate could improve the privileged mode containers. We had some problems and they were not able to run."
"Challenges include higher costs for smaller clients, limited control over underlying infrastructure customization, and potential latencies during task startup."
"Service computing is not as straightforward compared to other computing services. It requires more effort to use effectively."
"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."
"We faced challenges in vertically scaling our workload."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Lambda could be improved in the sense that some of the things done with Lambda function take some time. So the performance could be better and faster."
"AWS Lambda has some size limitations in the code line, you can't do a couple of functions to do the job."
"The feature to attach external storage, such as an S3 or elastic storage, must be added to AWS Lambda. This is its area for improvement."
"Having a better preview would be helpful."
"If you are setting it up on hybrid solution, there is a lot of work that needs to go in."
"We need to better understand Lambda for different scenarios. We need some joint effort between Amazon and the users to have the users identify how they can really leverage Lambda. It's not about Lambda itself; it's about the practice, the guidance. There needs to be very good documentation. From the user perspective, what exists now is not always enough."
"AWS Lambda is a bit difficult to set up if someone doesn't know how to code."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate the price of AWS Fargate a four out of five."
"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."
"The pricing is on-demand and based on runs or times that are billed out monthly."
"The pricing varies based on the specific solution you're implementing, and in comparison to the value it provides, the overall cost is reasonable."
"The price of AWS Lambda is priced very low."
"Lambda is a good and cheap solution and I would recommend it to those without a huge payload."
"Price-wise, AWS Lambda is very cheap. It's not free, but it's not that expensive."
"The solution is part of the AWS subscription model that is paid annually."
"The price of the solution is reasonable."
"This is a product that is pay-per-use, as opposed to a licensing fee."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
25%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
6%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Educational Organization
64%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
5%
Manufacturing Company
3%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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...
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...
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...
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 do you like most about AWS Lambda?
The tool scales automatically based on the number of incoming requests.
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.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
Netflix
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Fargate vs. AWS Lambda and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.