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What's the Difference Between AWS CDK and AWS SAM?

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

Compare side-by-side

Comparisons
AWS CDK
AWS SAM
Category

Developer Tools, Infrastructure as code

Serverless, Framework
Description

Infrastructure-as-code framework to model cloud resources

Open-source framework for building serverless applications with shorthand syntax for functions, APIs, and event sources.
Best for
  • Infrastructure as code
  • Application scaffolding
  • Reusable constructs
  • Multi-stack deployments
  • Serverless development
  • Local testing
  • CI/CD for serverless
  • Infrastructure as code
Key features
  • Multiple languages
  • Constructs library
  • CDK Pipelines
  • Asset bundling
  • Testing support
  • SAM CLI
  • Local testing
  • CloudFormation extension
  • Policy templates
  • Accelerate deployments
Pricing model

No additional charge; pay for resources created

No additional charge; pay for underlying resources
Free tier

Yes

Yes
Expert take

“CDK lets developers define infrastructure in the same language as their application, with IDE autocomplete and type safety. L2 and L3 constructs encode AWS best practices (encryption, logging, least-privilege) by default. CDK Pipelines builds self-mutating CI/CD that deploys both app and infra changes.”
— Gary McLean, re:Post Top Contributor [profile]

“SAM extends CloudFormation with serverless-specific shorthand. A single SAM function definition generates the Lambda function, IAM role, API Gateway endpoint, and event source.”
— Giovanni Lauria, re:Post Top Contributor [profile]
Product page

Learn more about AWS CDK »

Learn more about AWS SAM »

When to use AWS CDK or AWS SAM

Use AWS CDK when:

  • Infrastructure as code
  • Application scaffolding
  • Reusable constructs
  • Multi-stack deployments

Learn more about AWS CDK »

Use AWS SAM when:

  • Serverless development
  • Local testing
  • CI/CD for serverless
  • Infrastructure as code

Learn more about AWS SAM »

AWS product comparisons

Read about AWS products side-by-side

Displaying 1-8 (21)
2026-07-30

What's the difference between Amazon Aurora and Amazon Neptune?

Both are purpose-built, fully managed AWS databases, but they solve fundamentally different problems. Aurora handles structured relational data with SQL; Neptune handles highly connected data where relationships between entities are the primary query pattern.
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2026-07-30

What's the difference between Amazon RDS and Amazon Redshift?

Both run SQL queries, but they're optimized for fundamentally different workloads. RDS handles transactional operations (inserts, updates, lookups) for your application. Redshift handles analytical queries (aggregations, scans, joins across billions of rows) for your data team.
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2026-07-30

What's the difference between Amazon Aurora and Amazon DynamoDB?

Both are fully managed AWS database services, but they serve fundamentally different data models and access patterns. Aurora is a relational database for structured data with relationships; DynamoDB is a NoSQL key-value store built for single-digit millisecond performance at any scale.
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2026-07-30

What's the difference between Amazon DocumentDB and Amazon Neptune?

Both handle semi-structured data, but they're optimized for different query patterns. DocumentDB stores and queries JSON documents; Neptune stores and traverses relationships between entities.
Learn more
2026-07-30

What are the differences between Amazon DynamoDB and Amazon DocumentDB?

Both are fully managed NoSQL databases on AWS, but they serve different data models. DynamoDB is a key-value store optimized for known access patterns at massive scale; DocumentDB is a document database for flexible JSON schemas with MongoDB compatibility.
Learn more
2026-07-30

What's the difference between Amazon DynamoDB and Amazon Keyspaces?

Both are fully managed, serverless-capable NoSQL databases on AWS. DynamoDB is AWS-native with its own API and data model; Keyspaces is Apache Cassandra-compatible, letting you use existing Cassandra drivers, tools, and expertise.
Learn more
2026-07-30

What's the difference between Amazon ElastiCache and Amazon MemoryDB?

Both are Redis-compatible, fully managed in-memory services on AWS. ElastiCache is designed as a caching layer in front of another database; MemoryDB is designed as a primary database that combines in-memory speed with Multi-AZ durability.
Learn more
2026-07-30

What's the difference between Amazon Aurora and Amazon RDS?

Both are fully managed relational database services on AWS, but Aurora is a cloud-native engine built for higher performance and availability, while RDS gives you familiar open-source and commercial engines with less operational overhead than self-managed.
Learn more

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