Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups
Register | Login

AWS Fargate VS containerd

Compare AWS Fargate VS containerd and see what are their differences

PulpMiner
Converts Any Webpage Into Realtime JSON API 🟢 featured
Contents:
  1. » Base Details
  2. » Videos
  3. » Reviews
  4. » Alternatives

AWS Fargate logo AWS Fargate

AWS Fargate is a compute engine for Amazon ECS and EKS that allows you to run containers without having to manage servers or clusters.

containerd logo containerd

An industry-standard container runtime with an emphasis on simplicity, robustness and portability
  • AWS Fargate Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-10-29
  • containerd Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-04-15

AWS Fargate features and specs

  • Simplified Management
    AWS Fargate eliminates the need to provision, configure, and scale clusters of virtual machines, simplifying container management and reducing operational overhead.
  • Scalability
    Fargate automatically scales compute capacity to match the resource requirements of your application, ensuring performance and cost-efficiency.
  • Isolation
    Each Fargate task runs in its own environment, providing better security through enhanced isolation between tasks compared to shared environments.
  • Cost Efficiency
    Fargate allows you to pay only for the resources you actually use, such as vCPU and memory, which can be more cost-effective for unpredictable workloads.
  • Integration
    Fargate integrates seamlessly with other AWS services like Amazon ECS, ECR, IAM, and CloudWatch, providing a cohesive ecosystem for building and deploying applications.

Possible disadvantages of AWS Fargate

  • Higher Cost for Persistent Workloads
    While Fargate can be cost-efficient for variable workloads, it may become more expensive compared to EC2 for long-running, persistent workloads due to its pricing model.
  • Configuration Limitations
    Fargate may have limitations on the customization and configuration options available, which can be restrictive for certain use cases requiring highly specialized setups.
  • Cold Start Latency
    Fargate can experience cold start latency, where newly instantiated containers take a few seconds or longer to become operational, which can be a drawback for latency-sensitive applications.
  • Limited to AWS Ecosystem
    Fargate is tied to AWS's ecosystem, potentially causing vendor lock-in and limiting flexibility if you need to transition to a multi-cloud or hybrid environment.
  • Learning Curve
    For teams not familiar with the AWS ecosystem, there can be a learning curve associated with leveraging Fargate and its integrations effectively.

containerd features and specs

  • Lightweight
    Containerd focuses on providing core container primitives, making it lightweight and efficient compared to more comprehensive container management platforms.
  • CNCF Graduated
    Being a CNCF (Cloud Native Computing Foundation) graduated project means containerd has undergone rigorous scrutiny and is recognized as stable and secure.
  • Highly Modular
    Containerd provides a well-defined API with gRPC, making it highly modular and allowing for fine-grained control over container lifecycle management.
  • Kubernetes Integration
    Containerd acts as the default container runtime for Kubernetes via the CRI (Container Runtime Interface) plugin, ensuring excellent synergy with Kubernetes-managed environments.
  • Vendor-Neutral
    Containerd is an open-source project that is vendor-neutral, promoting community collaboration and reducing vendor lock-in.
  • Wide Industry Support
    Spearheaded initially by Docker, containerd has received wide support from tech giants like Google and Alibaba, ensuring a broad and robust adoption across the industry.

Possible disadvantages of containerd

  • Limited to Container Management
    Unlike platforms like Docker, containerd focuses solely on container lifecycle management and does not offer advanced networking, storage solutions, or orchestration engines.
  • Complex Integration
    While offering a high level of control, containerd’s modularity can translate into higher complexity when it comes to integrating it with other tools, such as monitoring and logging systems.
  • Fewer Features Out-of-the-Box
    Containerd provides fewer features out-of-the-box compared to more comprehensive container management systems, which may require additional components to achieve a similar feature set.
  • Steeper Learning Curve
    Due to its focus on being a low-level runtime, containerd can have a steeper learning curve for users not familiar with container runtime internals.

Analysis of AWS Fargate

Overall verdict

  • AWS Fargate is generally considered an excellent solution for organizations and developers looking to deploy containerized applications without the complexity of managing the underlying infrastructure. It is particularly well-suited for workloads that require dynamic scaling and benefit from a cloud-native, serverless environment.

Why this product is good

  • AWS Fargate is a serverless compute engine for containers that eliminates the need to provision and manage servers, allowing developers to focus on building and running applications rather than managing infrastructure. It offers scalability, flexibility, and reliability, integrating seamlessly with Amazon ECS and Amazon EKS to run containerized applications with ease. Key benefits include automatic scaling, a pay-as-you-go pricing model, and reduced operational overhead.

Recommended for

    AWS Fargate is recommended for teams and businesses of all sizes seeking to adopt a microservices architecture or run containerized applications in the cloud. It's especially beneficial for those who need to rapidly deploy applications without the overhead of infrastructure management, as well as for projects where workload demands are variable and scalability is a priority.

AWS Fargate videos

+ Add

Deep Dive into AWS Fargate

More videos:

  • Tutorial - AWS Fargate Tutorial | AWS Tutorial For Beginners | AWS Certification Training | Edureka
  • Review - AWS Fargate - Running Dockerized Apps

containerd videos

+ Add

Deep Dive: containerd - Derek McGowan, Docker & Phil Estes, IBM Cloud

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to AWS Fargate and containerd)

AWS Fargate

containerd

Developer Tools
60 60%
Developer Tools
40% 40
Cloud Computing
43 43%
Cloud Computing
57% 57
Containers As A Service
100 100%
Containers As A Service
0% 0
Cloud Storage
0 0%
Cloud Storage
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using AWS Fargate and containerd. 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 AWS Fargate and containerd

AWS Fargate Reviews

Top 12 Kubernetes Alternatives to Choose From in 2023
For Container-as-a-Service (CaaS) Kubernetes alternatives, AWS Fargate is a great option. It is well-known for simplifying container management and deployment on AWS.
Source: humalect.com
Top 10 Best Container Software in 2022
Using AWS Fargate, you now don’t need to provision, configure, and scale cluster virtual machines to execute containers. This, in turn, eliminates the requirement to select server types, determine at what time to scale your clusters or optimize cluster packing.
Source: www.softwaretestinghelp.com

containerd Reviews

5 Container Alternatives to Docker
containerd is described as “an industry-standard container runtime with an emphasis on simplicity, robustness and portability.” An incubating project of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, containerd is available as a daemon for Linux or Windows.
Source: containerjournal.com

Social recommendations and mentions

containerd might be a bit more popular than AWS Fargate. We know about 55 links to it since March 2021 and only 52 links to AWS Fargate. 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.

AWS Fargate mentions (52)

  • MCP Security: Tr-tr-tr-tricky, tricky, tricky
    The centerpiece of the authentication and authorization is an MCP Auth Service, which runs in a secure virtual private cloud (VPC) on AWS Fargate. MCP Auth Service works with DynamoDB and Cognito to send tokens to the MCP client, routing through the AWS Application Load Balancer and CloudFront. - Source: dev.to / 27 days ago
  • AWS Serverless Compute Offerings: A Comprehensive Developer’s Guide (2025)
    Security: Tasks run in dedicated runtime environments, ensuring workload isolation (AWS Fargate). - Source: dev.to / about 1 month 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 / 7 months ago
  • Ephemeral Jobs Longer than the Lambda Timeout
    One option is to use ECS run-task with a Fargate launch type. - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
  • AWS and Azure Are at Least 4x–10x More Expensive Than Hetzner
    The AWS equivalent to Cloud Run and Container Apps is called Fargate, https://aws.amazon.com/fargate/. - Source: Hacker News / 8 months ago
View more

containerd mentions (55)

  • Kubernetes Without Docker: Why Container Runtimes Are Changing the Game in 2025
    Containerd Official Site The runtime powering most cloud K8s clusters and your future mental breakdowns. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • Creating containers with containerd on ARM
    Also, Containers are the tool when you want to speed your process of updating your software and get modularity and portability when deploying your solutions. In this post you will learn how containerd together with nerdctl can help you with this use case scenario. Check their official websites for more info https://containerd.io and https://github.com/containerd/nerdctl. - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • Beyond Docker - A DevOps Engineer's Guide to Container Alternatives
    Having operated large Kubernetes clusters, one learns to love the focused approach of containerd. A light-weight, high-performance container runtime, it powers a lot of container platforms, including indirectly, Kubernetes. From my experience, containerd really does one thing and does it well: it runs containers efficiently. - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • Top 8 Docker Alternatives to Consider in 2025
    Containerd operates as a fundamental container runtime that manages the complete container lifecycle, functioning at a lower level than Docker while providing core container operations. - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • You run containers, not dockers - Discussing Docker variants, components and versioning
    So once we had a single binary, then "Docker, Inc" started separating the functionalities into multiple binaries on Linux. That was the beginning the of dependencies and components we have today, except that these dependencies are now not limited to Docker. Containerd can also be the container runtime of Kubernetes. - Source: dev.to / 8 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing AWS Fargate and containerd, 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.

Podman - Simple debugging tool for pods and images

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

CRI-O - Lightweight Container Runtime for Kubernetes

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

rkt - App Container runtime

Loading...