AWS Lambda vs Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Oct 30, 2022

We performed a comparison between Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling and AWS Lambda based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.

  • Ease of Deployment: For the most part, users of both solutions feel their installation and deployment are simple and straightforward.
  • Features: Users find Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling to be stable, flexible, and reliable. They say the solution is simple to use, deploys resources as needed, and can easily be adjusted down (or up again) as business needs change. Many users feel documentation could be improved and sizing options should be adjusted to match business needs better and be more cost-effective.

    AWS Lambda is serverless and scalable. Auto scale and other similar features are just inherent in Lambda. The event-based triggers are really good for a reactive style so users are able to effectively manage events as they happen. Some users feel the GUI could be improved to give it a more modern feel and that metrics and reporting need to be improved.
  • Pricing: Users feel pricing for both solutions is reasonable.
  • Service and Support: Overall, users of both solutions are satisfied with their service and support.

Comparison Results: Both products are very effective in providing compute service (IaaS) solutions. AWS Lambda slightly nudges ahead of Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling as many users feel it is easier to code using the solution. AWS Lambda is serverless, server configuration is not required, and can easily run it directly anywhere.

To learn more, read our detailed AWS Lambda vs. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling Report (Updated: March 2024).
765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The auto-scaling feature is particularly useful. Additionally, CloudWatch and CloudTrail are also important features for us.""The most valuable features are that it is stable, flexible, and reliable.""Most of what I've deployed are CI/CD pipelines. AWS is scalable. You can always increase or adjust the resources to meet the specific requirements. I also like choosing an instance in any location, preferably the closest one. We don't have any AWS locations in South Africa, but the latency is about the same as hosting in Europe.""The most valuable feature of Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling is scaling your intra based on the request. Additionally, you are able to map the solution with any load balancer, such as public or private load balancers.""Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling has good integration.""The tool helps me to process large data sets while scaling up.""The most useful feature is elasticity. You can scale up or down based on traffic.""What we have found most valuable are the purchasing of usage at the time and small storage."

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"The most valuable feature of this solution is the API Gateway.""AWS Lambda is itself serverless, and it is connected to the API gateway, and you can directly call the API through the API gateway and connect through AWS Lambda.""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.""Thanks to this solution, we do not need to worry about hardware or resource utilization. It saves us time.""Lambda being serverless is a great feature that is appropriate for our use cases.""The solution is designed very well. You don't need to keep a server up. You just need some router to route your API request and Lambda provides a very well-designed feature to process the request.""I think the most valuable feature is the agility of the solution.""I like that it's easy to use and maintain. Lambda is good and supports different platforms, so you don't need to worry about language or maintenance."

More AWS Lambda Pros →

Cons
"I would like to see a feature included that has the capability to clone when an instance is being terminated.""Automation is very hard.""The launch configuration feature doesn't work properly. It needs to improve the load configuration feature along with launch templates. The tool needs to tag feature as well.""Its stability and scalability need improvement.""I would like to see the security portal improved in the future.""As we are transitioning to managing containerized applications, the solution could improve by adding more managed container services as a feature in the solution.""The price could always be a bit better.""The product does not explain why a particular instance is terminated."

More Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling Cons →

"AWS Lambda needs to improve its stability.""Lamba functions have cold-starts that can cause some delay.""If you're running a new application with a significant load, you need to be prepared for potential bottlenecks.""The tool changes its UI every month which is very frustrating for me. I don’t know why AWS keeps changing the UI. They can’t stick to a specific one""The overall performance of this solution could be improved. We would also like to have better integration with other AWS features.""It could be cheaper.""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.""The execution time could be better. One of the major limitations is the time period because it doesn't give you more than seven minutes. So, before thinking about Lambda, you should think through your use case and ensure it's a good fit. Otherwise, you can use batch, step functions, or other methods. Reports and the monitoring board could also be improved in terms of alerts. The threshold alerts are there but can be improved. It takes some time to get used to these methods and get the hang of them."

More AWS Lambda Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "Pricing could be a little bit more competitive."
  • "The pricing is not fixed and it is based on usage."
  • "The price of this product could be a little bit lower."
  • "Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
  • "I have not explored the price of the solution extensively, but from what I have seen the price is alright."
  • "When we want to use more services, we need to pay more. It's a monthly subscription, rather than licensed-based. Pricing or fees for Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling could be improved."
  • "The solution pricing varies by service region is mid-range."
  • "Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling uses a pay-as-you-go pricing model."
  • More Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "AWS is slightly more expensive than Azure."
  • "Its pricing is on the higher side."
  • "The price of the solution is reasonable and it is a pay-per-use model. It is very good for cost optimization."
  • "The cost is based on runtime."
  • "The fees are volume-based."
  • "AWS Lambda is inexpensive."
  • "Lambda is a good and cheap solution and I would recommend it to those without a huge payload."
  • "For licensing, we pay a yearly subscription."
  • More AWS Lambda Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:The tool must provide proper guidelines to troubleshoot connectivity issues. It must also improve AMI creation.
    Top Answer: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… more »
    Top Answer:The tool scales automatically based on the number of incoming requests.
    Top Answer:We only need to pay for the compute time our code consumes. The solution does not cost much.
    Ranking
    2nd
    out of 16 in Compute Service
    Views
    3,252
    Comparisons
    2,834
    Reviews
    31
    Average Words per Review
    324
    Rating
    9.0
    1st
    out of 16 in Compute Service
    Views
    12,808
    Comparisons
    9,061
    Reviews
    35
    Average Words per Review
    401
    Rating
    8.6
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    AWS RAM
    Learn More
    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.

    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.

    Sample Customers
    Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
    Netflix
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company45%
    Financial Services Firm14%
    Comms Service Provider9%
    Media Company5%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm22%
    Computer Software Company13%
    University8%
    Government6%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company24%
    Financial Services Firm21%
    Non Profit5%
    Educational Organization5%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization46%
    Financial Services Firm13%
    Computer Software Company8%
    Manufacturing Company4%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business36%
    Midsize Enterprise8%
    Large Enterprise56%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise10%
    Large Enterprise65%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business38%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise45%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business10%
    Midsize Enterprise50%
    Large Enterprise40%
    Buyer's Guide
    AWS Lambda vs. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Lambda vs. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling is ranked 2nd in Compute Service with 36 reviews while AWS Lambda is ranked 1st in Compute Service with 70 reviews. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling is rated 8.8, while AWS Lambda is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling writes "Well-documented setup process and highly stable solution". On the other hand, the top reviewer of AWS Lambda writes "An easily scalable solution with a variety of use cases and valuable event-based triggers". Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling is most compared with AWS Fargate, AWS Batch, Amazon Elastic Inference, Oracle Compute Cloud Service and Apache NiFi, whereas AWS Lambda is most compared with AWS Batch, Apache NiFi, Apache Spark, AWS Fargate and Google Cloud Dataflow. See our AWS Lambda vs. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling report.

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    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.