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What's the Difference Between AWS Fargate and AWS Lambda?

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

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Comparisons
AWS Fargate
AWS Lambda
Category

Containers, Serverless Containers

Serverless, Functions
Description

Serverless compute for containers. Run containers without managing servers or clusters.

Service for running code without thinking about servers or clusters
Best for
  • Microservices
  • Batch processing
  • ML inference
  • Application migration
  • Event-driven processing
  • API backends
  • Data transformation
  • Real-time file processing
Key features
  • No server management
  • Isolation by design
  • ECS & EKS compatible
  • Spot capacity
  • ARM support
  • Auto scaling
  • Sub-second metering
  • Multiple runtimes
  • Container image support
  • Provisioned concurrency
Pricing model

Pay for vCPU and memory per second

Pay-per-request + compute duration
Free tier

No

Yes
Expert take

“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]

“Lambda is best used for single-function microservices that are small, fast, and easy to maintain. For workloads with unpredictable traffic, short duration, or infrequent invocations, Lambda eliminates the need to manage infrastructure entirely.”
— Didier Durand, re:Post Top Contributor [profile]
Product page

Learn more about AWS Fargate »

Learn more about AWS Lambda »

When to use AWS Fargate or AWS Lambda

Use AWS Fargate when:

  • Microservices
  • Batch processing
  • ML inference
  • Application migration

Learn more about AWS Fargate »

Use AWS Lambda when:

  • Event-driven processing
  • API backends
  • Data transformation
  • Real-time file processing

Learn more about AWS Lambda »

AWS product comparisons

Read about AWS products side-by-side

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