Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Amazon ECS VS AWS CodeBuild

Compare Amazon ECS VS AWS CodeBuild 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.

AWS CodeBuild logo AWS CodeBuild

Online shopping from the earth's biggest selection of books, magazines, music, DVDs, videos, electronics, computers, software, apparel & accessories, shoes, jewelry, tools & hardware, housewares, furniture, sporting goods, beauty & personal care, br…
  • Amazon ECS Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-04-05
  • AWS CodeBuild Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-03-19

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.

AWS CodeBuild features and specs

  • Fully Managed
    AWS CodeBuild is a fully managed continuous integration service. Users do not need to worry about provisioning, managing, and scaling their own build servers.
  • Scalability
    CodeBuild automatically scales up and down to meet the demands of your build process, ensuring that builds are completed quickly without manual intervention.
  • Pay-as-You-Go Pricing
    Users only pay for the compute time they consume with CodeBuild, making it a cost-effective solution for many developer teams.
  • Integration with AWS Services
    CodeBuild integrates seamlessly with other AWS services like S3, EC2, and CloudWatch, providing a cohesive environment for your development and deployment pipelines.
  • Custom Environment Support
    Users can define their own build environments with custom Docker images, providing flexibility to meet specific build requirements.

Possible disadvantages of AWS CodeBuild

  • Complex Setup for Beginners
    Setting up projects in CodeBuild can be complex for users who are new to AWS or continuous integration services.
  • Limited Local Testing
    Unlike some CI tools, AWS CodeBuild provides limited options for running builds locally before pushing changes, which can hinder testing processes.
  • Learning Curve
    Users unfamiliar with AWS services may face a steep learning curve when first using CodeBuild as it involves understanding several AWS concepts and configurations.
  • Potential Costs at Scale
    While the pay-as-you-go model is cost-effective for small workloads, costs can accumulate significantly as usage scales up if not managed carefully.
  • Configuration Management
    Managing build spec files and environment configurations can become complex, especially in projects with many different build processes.

Amazon ECS videos

Amazon ECS: Core Concepts

AWS CodeBuild videos

AWS CodeBuild Tutorial

More videos:

  • Review - AWS CodeBuild Overview
  • Review - All the AWS CodeBuild You Can Stomach in 45 Minutes

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Amazon ECS and AWS CodeBuild)
Developer Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Continuous Integration
0 0%
100% 100
Cloud Computing
94 94%
6% 6
DevOps Tools
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using Amazon ECS and AWS CodeBuild. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
Log in or Post with

Reviews

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

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.

AWS CodeBuild Reviews

We have no reviews of AWS CodeBuild yet.
Be the first one to post

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Amazon ECS should be more popular than AWS CodeBuild. It has been mentiond 52 times since March 2021. 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
View more

AWS CodeBuild mentions (13)

  • Low Cost "Overkill" AWS Infrastructure for a Newborn Startup
    Therefore, I used AWS Codebuild and AWS CodePipeline to automate the steps of building and deploying the services. The diagram below depicts all the steps required to continuously deliver the frontend and backend applications:. - Source: dev.to / about 2 years ago
  • How CodeCatalyst compares to other AWS Services related to Development and CI/CD processes
    We treat these services in one  group as they belong together from a strategic point of view. They have been around for a few years and the teams that built these are now involved in CodeCatalyst. CodeCatalyst partly uses them “under the hood”. CodeCommit is a managed git hosting, CodeBuild is a managed “build” system, CodeStar is a “project management” tool. CodePipeline allows combining multiple CodeBuild steps... - Source: dev.to / about 2 years ago
  • Well-Architected Review - Part II - Operational Excellence
    Design for Operations You should implement your entire workload as code. The benefit is that you can apply the same engineering discipline that you use for application code to your infrastructure. Use version control system like AWS Codecommit to enable tracking of changes and releases, and use AWS Cloudformation for your infrastructure templates. It is recommendable to test and validate changes to help limit... - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • DevSecOps with AWS - Multi Environment deployments - Part 2
    AWS CodeBuild: fully managed continuous integration service that compiles source code, runs tests, and produces software packages that are ready to deploy. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • DEVOPS AS A SERVICE
    AWS CodeBuild is a completely managed service for compiling code, testing quality assurance using automated procedures, and generating software ready for deployment. CodeBuild is incredibly secure, as each client receives a unique set of encryption keys to include in each created artifact. Source: almost 3 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Amazon ECS and AWS CodeBuild, you can also consider the following products

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.

AWS CodePipeline - Continuous delivery service for fast and reliable application updates

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

Jenkins - Jenkins is an open-source continuous integration server with 300+ plugins to support all kinds of software development

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

CircleCI - CircleCI gives web developers powerful Continuous Integration and Deployment with easy setup and maintenance.