Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Amazon EC2 VS Amazon Web Services Lambda

Compare Amazon EC2 VS Amazon Web Services Lambda and see what are their differences

Amazon EC2 logo Amazon EC2

Amazon Web Services offers reliable, scalable, and inexpensive cloud computing services. Free to join, pay only for what you use.

Amazon Web Services Lambda logo Amazon Web Services Lambda

Amazon Web Services Lambda is a platform for easy building of data processing triggers for AES services of all types.
  • Amazon EC2 Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-04-06
  • Amazon Web Services Lambda Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-12-09

Amazon EC2 features and specs

  • Scalability
    Amazon EC2 allows you to quickly scale your resources up or down based on demand. This flexibility helps you manage your compute needs efficiently without overcommitting resources.
  • Pay-as-you-go pricing
    With Amazon EC2, you only pay for the instances you use. This usage-based pricing model can help reduce costs, especially for businesses with variable compute workloads.
  • Wide range of instance types
    EC2 offers a variety of instance types optimized for different use cases, such as compute-intensive or memory-intensive applications, allowing you to choose the most suitable instance for your needs.
  • Global availability
    Amazon EC2 is available in multiple regions around the world, enabling you to deploy your applications closer to your users for reduced latency and improved performance.
  • Integration with other AWS services
    EC2 integrates seamlessly with other AWS services such as S3, RDS, and VPC, providing a comprehensive cloud infrastructure for your applications.
  • Security and compliance
    Amazon EC2 provides a range of security features, including VPC, IAM roles, and encryption, to help you protect your data and comply with regulatory requirements.

Possible disadvantages of Amazon EC2

  • Complexity
    Managing EC2 instances can be complex, especially as your infrastructure grows. This may require specialized knowledge and skills to properly configure, monitor, and maintain the instances.
  • Cost management
    Although the pay-as-you-go model can be cost-effective, it can also lead to unexpected expenses if resources are not managed carefully. Overprovisioning or forgetting to shut down instances can quickly increase costs.
  • Performance variability
    While EC2 offers high performance, there can be variability in resources allocated to your instances, especially in the shared tenancy model. This can lead to occasional performance inconsistencies.
  • In-depth knowledge required
    To fully leverage Amazon EC2, a good level of expertise in AWS services, cloud computing concepts, and best practices is required. This can be a barrier for organizations without adequate technical skills.
  • Vendor lock-in
    Relying heavily on Amazon EC2 can lead to vendor lock-in, making it challenging to migrate to alternative platforms or cloud providers without significant effort and potential downtime.
  • Privacy concerns
    Although AWS provides robust security measures, some organizations may have concerns about storing sensitive data on a third-party managed service and prefer managing their own infrastructure.

Amazon Web Services Lambda features and specs

  • Scalability
    AWS Lambda automatically scales your application by running your code in response to each trigger, handling scaling from a few requests per day to thousands per second.
  • Cost Efficiency
    Lambda charges you only for the compute time you consume, without the need to pay for idle server time, which helps optimize cost efficiency.
  • No Server Management
    You don't have to manage any servers or infrastructure, allowing you to focus on writing code and developing functionality rather than maintaining hardware.
  • Event-driven Model
    Lambda integrates seamlessly with other AWS services and can be triggered using AWS events, making it highly suitable for building event-driven and serverless architectures.
  • Flexible Scaling and Processing
    AWS Lambda provides flexibility in resource allocation, allowing you to adjust memory and execution timings to optimize performance for different workloads.

Possible disadvantages of Amazon Web Services Lambda

  • Cold Start Latency
    The first invocation of a Lambda function can experience a delay known as 'cold start,' which can affect applications sensitive to latency.
  • Execution Timeout
    Lambda functions have a maximum execution timeout of 15 minutes, which may not be suitable for long-running processes or tasks.
  • Resource Limitations
    Lambda has limitations on memory, disk space, and other resources, which can restrict the functions it can perform depending on application requirements.
  • Vendor Lock-In
    Using AWS Lambda heavily can lead to vendor lock-in, making it challenging to migrate to different platforms without significant re-architecting.
  • Complexity in Large Systems
    For large systems with numerous functions and dependencies, managing and orchestrating Lambda functions can become complex and challenging.

Analysis of Amazon EC2

Overall verdict

  • Yes, Amazon EC2 is generally considered good for hosting scalable and robust applications in the cloud. Its ability to adapt to various computing needs while ensuring security and flexibility makes it a popular choice among developers and businesses.

Why this product is good

  • Amazon EC2 is considered good because it offers scalable computing capacity in the cloud. It provides flexible configurations, a wide range of instance types, reliable performance, robust security features, and a strong ecosystem of AWS services to support diverse workloads. Furthermore, the pay-as-you-go pricing model ensures cost efficiency, making it accessible for startups, enterprises, and everything in between.

Recommended for

  • Startups looking for cost-effective cloud computing solutions.
  • Established businesses needing reliable and scalable infrastructure.
  • Developers requiring a customizable environment to run applications.
  • Companies wanting to leverage a broad selection of complementary AWS services.
  • Organizations aiming for a hybrid cloud approach with seamless integration.

Amazon EC2 videos

Introduction to Amazon EC2 - Elastic Cloud Server & Hosting with AWS

More videos:

  • Review - What is Amazon EC2? (Part 1) | AWS Training

Amazon Web Services Lambda videos

No Amazon Web Services Lambda videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

Add video

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Amazon EC2 and Amazon Web Services Lambda)
Cloud Computing
91 91%
9% 9
Development
0 0%
100% 100
Cloud Infrastructure
95 95%
5% 5
VPS
96 96%
4% 4

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Amazon EC2 might be a bit more popular than Amazon Web Services Lambda. We know about 81 links to it since March 2021 and only 55 links to Amazon Web Services Lambda. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Amazon EC2 mentions (81)

  • Fine-Tuning 14B SLMs for 3GPP Root Cause Analysis on Amazon SageMaker
    For production deployment, the fine-tuned SLMs can run on SageMaker Real-Time Endpoints, self-hosted EC2, or even AWS Outposts for on-premise telco edge deployments where data residency is required. - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • The hosting setup nobody talks about anymore
    In this post we are using an Amazon EC2 T3 Micro instance running Ubuntu with an nginx web server. We'll use AWS Systems Manager to help set up a CI/CD pipeline using GitHub Actions. We'll then configure AWS Certificate Manager with Amazon CloudFront and have it connected to our domain with Amazon Route 53! We'll be using a Vue Nuxt 4 application as our web app. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • Cut AWS Bills by 50โ€“75% with EC2 and RDS Parking
    Cloud compute spend is one of the most visible and controllable components of AWS infrastructure costs, yet many organizations still pay for idle resources. Development, testing, UAT, QA, sandbox, and demo environments often run 24/7 out of convenience, even though they are only needed during business hours. Automatically stopping (โ€œparkingโ€) resources such as Amazon EC2 and Amazon RDS during off-hours is a... - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • 16 hands-on exercises to prepare for the AWS Certified CloudOps Engineer - Associate certification exam
    I believe that learning only theory or cramming these configuration options might not be enough to pass the exam. Also, and let's put your hand over your heart, memorizing EC2 or S3 settings will not make you a better cloud professional. - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
  • Optimizing AWS Costs for AI Development in 2025
    Compute: This is the big one. It's the cost of running EC2 instances with GPUs (like the g5 or p4 series) for model training and deployment. It also includes the compute for services like Amazon SageMaker and AWS Batch. - Source: dev.to / 11 months ago
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Amazon Web Services Lambda mentions (55)

  • 5 Architecture Patterns Every Web Application Developer Should Understand
    AWS Lambda, Google Cloud Functions, and Azure Functions are the major serverless platforms. Serverless is strongest for applications with variable traffic patterns: an API that handles 10 requests per minute most of the day but spikes to 10,000 during a marketing campaign scales automatically without manual intervention. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • The 80/20 of AWS (the services that actually matter)
    Lambda lets you run code without managing servers. You write a function, upload it to Lambda, and it runs whenever something triggers it. An HTTP request, a file landing in S3, a message hitting a queue, a scheduled timer. Lambda handles the scaling. If you get one request, it runs one copy. If you get ten thousand simultaneous requests, it runs ten thousand copies. - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • Launch Your First Serverless API: Hands-On with AWS Chalice on AWS Lambda
    If issues arise (e.g., permissions), check logs via chalice logs. For region-specific tips, browse AWS Lambda docs. - Source: dev.to / 11 months ago
  • Choosing between EventBridge, SNS, and SQS for event-driven patterns
    When the event bus receives a matching event, EventBridge routes it to the assigned target, in this case, a Lambda function. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Building MongoDB-based event-driven applications with DocumentDB
    A Lambda function will act as the endpoint integration and save new products to the database. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Amazon EC2 and Amazon Web Services Lambda, you can also consider the following products

DigitalOcean - Simplifying cloud hosting. Deploy an SSD cloud server in 55 seconds.

Amazon API Gateway - Create, publish, maintain, monitor, and secure APIs at any scale

Linode - We make it simple to develop, deploy, and scale cloud infrastructure at the best price-to-performance ratio in the market.

Azure Kubernetes Service - Learn the features and benefits of Azure Kubernetes Service to deploy and manage container-based applications in Azure.

Vultr - Global, automated cloud infrastructure from the broadest array of AMD and NVIDIA GPUs to virtual CPUs, bare metal, Kubernetes, storage, and networking solutions.

Equinix - We help world-class brands connect.