AWS Lambda vs Google Cloud Dataflow comparison

The compared Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google solutions aren't in the same category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #1 in CS , with an average rating of 8.6, and holds a 20.3% mindshare in the category. Google is ranked #8 in SA , with an average rating of 7.9, and holds a 8.4% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 90% of Google users who would recommend it.

AWS Lambda

Read 79 AWS Lambda reviews

7,430 Views
4,519 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Google Cloud Dataflow

Read 10 Google Cloud Dataflow reviews

3,811 Views
3,133 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

AWS Lambda

Google Cloud Dataflow

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between AWS Lambda and Google Cloud Dataflow based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Web Services (AWS), Apache, Spot by NetApp and others in Compute Service.

To learn more, read our detailed Compute Service Report (Updated: December 2024).

Buyer's Guide

Compute Service

December 2024

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Helped 824,067 peers since 2012

Categories and Ranking

AWS Lambda

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Compute Service (1st)

Google Cloud Dataflow

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Streaming Analytics (8th)

Mindshare comparison

AWS Lambda and Google Cloud Dataflow aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. AWS Lambda is designed for Compute Service and holds a mindshare of 20.3%, down 27.7% compared to last year.
Google Cloud Dataflow, on the other hand, focuses on Streaming Analytics, holds 8.4% mindshare, up 6.8% since last year.

Compute Service

Streaming Analytics

Featured Reviews

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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Tamer Talal

Satellite System Engineer at NARSS

A tool useful for data transmission and data storage that needs to improve its authentication area

The authentication part of the product is an area of concern where improvements are required. For some common users, the solution's authentication part is difficult to use. The scalability of the product is an area of concern where improvements are required. In the future, the product should be made available at a cheaper rate.

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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

"AWS Lambda is serverless."

"AWS Lambda is cost-effective, providing noticeable cost savings."

"I like the pay-for-what-you-use feature. This is the main reason why we use AWS Lambda. I don't have to manage servers; I just have to configure Lambda and expose it to an API gateway."

"The feature I found most valuable about Lambda is the fact that it's serverless."

"The serverless computing feature eliminates the need to manage servers, provision, or scale."

"I have used AWS Lambda for simple messaging for SQS, creating a cron job, and delay messaging."

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

"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."

More AWS Lambda pros

"Google Cloud Dataflow is useful for streaming and data pipelines."

"The most valuable features of Google Cloud Dataflow are scalability and connectivity."

"The product's installation process is easy...The tool's maintenance part is somewhat easy."

"It is a scalable solution."

"The service is relatively cheap compared to other batch-processing engines."

"The most valuable features of Google Cloud Dataflow are the integration, it's very simple if you have the complete stack, which we are using. It is overall very easy to use, user-friendly friendly, and cost-effective if you know how to use it. The solution is very flexible for programmers, if you know how to do scripts or program in Python or any other language, it's extremely easy to use."

"The solution allows us to program in any language we desire."

"The best feature of Google Cloud Dataflow is its practical connectedness."

More Google Cloud Dataflow pros

Cons

"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."

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

"My engineers work with it on a daily basis. I just don't have enough depth of knowledge about what kinds of edge cases they may have tried and found lacking. There may be some issues with some language support at one point or another because we couldn't get the underlying libraries in there. A lot of what we do is either in JavaScript, Python, or some of the non-compiled languages. I'm not sure if we've ever tried building a C# solution, for instance, in Lambda or a Java solution in Lambda. It doesn't mean those aren't its capabilities. I would rather refer to my engineers for where the boundaries are."

"I would like the layers to have a bigger volume. I would like to be able to add more. I don't want to be limited by the layer."

"Lambda has limitations on the amount of memory you can use and is not a good solution for long running processes."

"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."

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

"The metrics and reporting for this solution could be improved."

More AWS Lambda cons

"The authentication part of the product is an area of concern where improvements are required."

"Google Cloud Data Flow can improve by having full simple integration with Kafka topics. It's not that complicated, but it could improve a bit. The UI is easy to use but the experience could be better. There are other tools available that do a better job."

"There are certain challenges regarding the Google Cloud Composer which can be improved."

"The technical support has slight room for improvement."

"Google Cloud Dataflow should include a little cost optimization."

"The solution's setup process could be more accessible."

"I would like Google Cloud Dataflow to be integrated with IT data flow and other related services to make it easier to use as it is a complex tool."

"When I deploy the product in local errors, a lot of errors pop up which are not always caught. The solution's error logging is bad. It can take a lot of time to debug the errors. It needs to have better logs."

More Google Cloud Dataflow cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"AWS Lambda is a cheap solution."

"AWS Lambda is cheap."

"AWS Lambda's cloud version isn't expensive, and I'd rate its pricing as five out of five."

"This is a product that is pay-per-use, as opposed to a licensing fee."

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

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

"You're not paying for a server if you're not using it, which is another reason I like it. So, you're not paying if you're not using it. It scales, and you're charged based on usage. It all depends on the use case. Some can be extremely inexpensive if you have very low volume transaction rates. That way, you don't have to fire up and absorb the cost of the servers just sitting there waiting for a transaction to come through. You're only paying when you use it. So, depending upon the use model, Lambda could be highly efficient relative to an EC2 solution. You don't have to have things reallocated."

"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

"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate Google Cloud Dataflow's pricing a four out of ten."

"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a seven to eight out of ten."

"Google Cloud is slightly cheaper than AWS."

"Google Cloud Dataflow is a cheap solution."

"The solution is not very expensive."

"The price of the solution depends on many factors, such as how they pay for tools in the company and its size."

"The solution is cost-effective."

"The tool is cheap."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

62%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

17%

Retailer

12%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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...

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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 offers a highly favorable pricing model, especially for smaller applications or low-traffic workloads. The first one million requests per month are free, which provides significant cost ...

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What do you like most about Google Cloud Dataflow?

The product's installation process is easy...The tool's maintenance part is somewhat easy.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Google Cloud Dataflow?

The solution is not very expensive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Google Cloud Dataflow?

See all answers

Comparisons

AWS Batch vs AWS Lambda

Compared 50% of the time

Apache NiFi vs AWS Lambda

Compared 14% of the time

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling vs AWS Lambda

Compared 13% of the time

Apache Spark vs AWS Lambda

Compared 9% of the time

AWS Fargate vs AWS Lambda

Compared 3% of the time

More AWS Lambda Competitors

Databricks vs Google Cloud Dataflow

Compared 42% of the time

Apache NiFi vs Google Cloud Dataflow

Compared 11% of the time

Amazon MSK vs Google Cloud Dataflow

Compared 11% of the time

Apache Flink vs Google Cloud Dataflow

Compared 9% of the time

Azure Stream Analytics vs Google Cloud Dataflow

Compared 3% of the time

More Google Cloud Dataflow Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

AWS Lambda

December 2024

Download AWS Lambda product report

Buyer's Guide

Streaming Analytics

December 2024

Download Google Cloud Dataflow product report

Also Known As

No data available

Google Dataflow

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Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Google

Overview

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.

Google Dataflow is a unified programming model and a managed service for developing and executing a wide range of data processing patterns including ETL, batch computation, and continuous computation. Cloud Dataflow frees you from operational tasks like resource management and performance optimization.

Sample Customers

Netflix

Absolutdata, Backflip Studios, Bluecore, Claritics, Crystalloids, Energyworx, GenieConnect, Leanplum, Nomanini, Redbus, Streak, TabTale

Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Web Services (AWS), Apache, Spot by NetApp and others in Compute Service. Updated: December 2024.

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