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What's the Difference Between AWS App Runner and AWS Fargate?

Compare AWS App Runner and AWS Fargate side by side — features, pricing, and ideal use cases to help you choose the right product.

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Comparisons
AWS App Runner
AWS Fargate
Category

Compute, PaaS

Containers, Serverless Containers
Description

Build, deploy, and run containerized web applications and API services without prior infrastructure experience.

Serverless compute for containers. Run containers without managing servers or clusters.
Best for
  • Web applications
  • API services
  • Microservices
  • Rapid prototyping
  • Microservices
  • Batch processing
  • ML inference
  • Application migration
Key features
  • Automatic scaling
  • Built-in load balancing
  • TLS encryption
  • VPC connectivity
  • Source code deployment
  • No server management
  • Isolation by design
  • ECS & EKS compatible
  • Spot capacity
  • ARM support
Pricing model

Pay for compute and memory resources used

Pay for vCPU and memory per second
Free tier

No

No
Expert take

“App Runner is the fastest path from source code to a running HTTPS endpoint. It handles TLS, load balancing, and auto-scaling with zero infrastructure configuration. Use it when deployment speed matters more than fine-grained control.”
— Didier Durand, re:Post Top Contributor [profile]

“Fargate removes the need to manage EC2 instances for your containers. Choose it when you want per-task isolation without worrying about patching hosts, right-sizing nodes, or bin-packing. You pay per-second for only the vCPU and memory each task uses.”
— Didier Durand, re:Post Top Contributor [profile]
Product page

Learn more about AWS App Runner »

Learn more about AWS Fargate »

When to use AWS App Runner or AWS Fargate

Use AWS App Runner when:

  • Web applications
  • API services
  • Microservices
  • Rapid prototyping

Learn more about AWS App Runner »

Use AWS Fargate when:

  • Microservices
  • Batch processing
  • ML inference
  • Application migration

Learn more about AWS Fargate »

AWS product comparisons

Read about AWS products side-by-side

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