Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Amazon ECS VS Amazon Web Services Lambda

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

Amazon ECS logo Amazon ECS

Amazon EC2 Container Service is a highly scalable, high-performance​ container management service that supports Docker containers.

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 ECS Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-04-05
  • Amazon Web Services Lambda Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-12-09

Amazon ECS features and specs

  • Cost-Effective
    Amazon ECS allows you to run only the computing resources you need. You can scale your services up or down based on demand, optimizing costs efficiently.
  • Integration with AWS Services
    ECS seamlessly integrates with other AWS services like IAM, VPC, CloudWatch, and more, providing a cohesive and robust ecosystem for your applications.
  • Ease of Use
    ECS is managed by AWS, reducing the complexity of setting up, operating, and scaling containerized applications. It handles orchestration tasks, simplifying deployment and management.
  • Security
    Offers strong security features like IAM roles for tasks, fine-tuned network policies, and encrypted traffic between services, ensuring robust security for your applications.
  • High Availability
    ECS leverages AWS’s global infrastructure, enabling you to deploy applications across multiple availability zones for high availability and fault tolerance.

Possible disadvantages of Amazon ECS

  • Complexity in Hybrid Environments
    Integrating ECS with non-AWS components in a hybrid cloud setup can be complex, requiring additional configuration and management effort.
  • Vendor Lock-In
    Being tightly integrated with AWS services means that migrating away from ECS to another container orchestration platform could be challenging and time-consuming.
  • Learning Curve
    While ECS simplifies many tasks, users still need to understand AWS services and best practices, creating a learning curve for those new to the AWS ecosystem.
  • Limited Multi-Cloud Support
    Unlike Kubernetes, which can be deployed in multi-cloud environments, ECS is mainly optimized for AWS, limiting its flexibility in multi-cloud strategies.
  • Dependency on AWS Infrastructure
    The performance and availability of ECS are dependent on AWS infrastructure, making it less appealing for organizations that need infrastructure independence.

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.

Amazon ECS videos

Amazon ECS: Core Concepts

Amazon Web Services Lambda videos

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

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Category Popularity

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Developer Tools
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Development
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100% 100
Cloud Computing
81 81%
19% 19
Cloud Hosting
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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Amazon ECS and Amazon Web Services Lambda

Amazon ECS Reviews

The Top 7 Kubernetes Alternatives for Container Orchestration
Amazon ECS is a flexible, high-performing, scalable container management solution compatible with Docker containers that let you run your applications on a controlled group of Amazon EC2 instances. Through Amazon ECS, you don’t have to set up and manage the cluster’s management infrastructure or set up tasks. You can use the management tools of AWS Console or SDKs, AWS CLI...
Top 10 Best Container Software in 2022
If you are looking for great backup recovery and building cloud-native applications, then AWS Fartgate is one of the best tools. If you initially want to do POCs without investing much in infrastructure, then Amazon ECS is a good choice because of its pay per use pricing model.

Amazon Web Services Lambda Reviews

We have no reviews of Amazon Web Services Lambda yet.
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Social recommendations and mentions

Amazon ECS might be a bit more popular than Amazon Web Services Lambda. We know about 52 links to it since March 2021 and only 49 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 ECS mentions (52)

  • AWS ECS vs Sliplane
    Amazon's Elastic Container Service (ECS) and Sliplane both simplify deployment, management, and scaling of containerized applications. However, there are some key differences, and both platforms serve different users and use cases. Let's compare them side by side. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • Top 8 Docker Alternatives to Consider in 2025
    AWS Elastic Container Service (ECS) and Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) provide managed container orchestration platforms integrated with AWS infrastructure. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • Day 3: What is Docker and why should I care?
    Most cloud platforms support Docker containers. Sliplane, Fly.io, AWS, Google Cloud, etc. This means that you can easily switch between cloud providers if you want to, without having to change your software. If you ever migrated from one cloud provider to another, you probably know how much work this can be. With Docker, you can just take your container image and run it on the new platform. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • The New Dev's Guide to Externalizing App Config
    In containerized environments like Kubernetes or Amazon ECS, configuration is often injected as environment variables or mounted as files. Your app starts up with fresh values every time—no rebuilds needed. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • Large-scale Data Processing with Step Functions : AWS Project
    The workers in this example are containers, running in Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) with an Amazon Fargate Capacity Provider . Though the workers could potentially run almost anywhere so long as they had access to poll the Step Functions Activity and report SUCCESS/FAILURE back to Step Functions. - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
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Amazon Web Services Lambda mentions (49)

  • 4 Cognito User Pools features you might not know about
    We can set up Cognito to trigger a Lambda function at various stages of the sign-up and sign-in processes. These functions can enrich both the ID token and the access token. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Building a Real-Time Serverless Chat App with AWS: A Scalable Approach
    You will learn the following in this lesson: Learn how to set up AWS AppSync to handle messages in real time. This article explains how to store messages in DynamoDB, a NoSQL database that can grow as needed. This article explains how to use AWS Lambda to build your own business code. This article explains how to use React to make a simple front end that talks to the chat back end. By the end of this... - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • Stop bringing old practices to the cloud
    This is often due to a lack of training and knowledge about cloud-native services or capabilities. Many legacy workloads were built on top of 3-tier architecture since this was the common way most IT/developers knew for many years. Architectures were centralized and monolithic, and organizations had to consider scale, and deploy enough compute resources, many times in advance, failing to predict spikes in... - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • Parameter Management at Scale: How Multi-Region Configurations Saved My Application
    Without going into details, I enable versioning when I use Lambda. Each version makes the Lambda immutable, ensuring that code and configuration do not change once published. - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
  • Time to move on to Day 2 cloud operations
    On Day 1, it may be ok to take traditional architectures (such as manually maintaining VMs), but on Day 2 it is time to take the full benefit of cloud-native services. The easiest way is to replace any manual maintenance of infrastructure with managed services – in most cases, switching to a managed database, storage, or even load-balancers and API gateways, will provide a lot of benefits (such as lower... - Source: dev.to / 9 months ago
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What are some alternatives?

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

Docker - Docker is an open platform that enables developers and system administrators to create distributed applications.

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

Google Kubernetes Engine - Google Kubernetes Engine is a powerful cluster manager and orchestration system for running your Docker containers. Set up a cluster in minutes.

Go Programming Language - Go, also called golang, is a programming language initially developed at Google in 2007 by Robert...

Kubernetes - Kubernetes is an open source orchestration system for Docker containers

AWS Secrets Manager - AWS Secrets Manager to Rotate, Manage, Retrieve Secrets