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Serverless VS Now API

Compare Serverless VS Now API and see what are their differences

Serverless logo Serverless

Toolkit for building serverless applications

Now API logo Now API

Instant serverless Node.JS deployments with an API.
  • Serverless Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-06
  • Now API Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-20

Serverless features and specs

  • Scalability
    Serverless architectures can automatically scale up or down based on the traffic, without the need for manual intervention.
  • Cost Efficiency
    You only pay for what you use. There are no expenses for idle times because billing is based on the actual amount of resources consumed by your application.
  • Reduced Maintenance
    No need to manage, patch, update, or monitor servers. This allows focus on writing code and deploying features.
  • Speed of Development
    Serverless platforms provide built-in integration with other services, which makes it quicker to develop and deploy applications.
  • High Availability
    Serverless platforms typically offer high availability and fault tolerance out of the box, reducing the risk of downtime.

Possible disadvantages of Serverless

  • Cold Start Latency
    Serverless functions can suffer from higher latency during initial invocation or when they haven’t been used for a while.
  • Limited Execution Time
    Most serverless platforms impose a maximum execution time limit on functions, which may not be suitable for long-running applications.
  • Vendor Lock-In
    Serverless architectures often rely on the specific features and services of a cloud provider, which can make it difficult to switch providers.
  • Complexity in Debugging
    Debugging and monitoring serverless applications can be more challenging compared to traditional architectures, due to their distributed and ephemeral nature.
  • Security Concerns
    Sharing resources on a serverless platform can introduce security vulnerabilities that must be managed vigilantly.

Now API features and specs

  • Scalability
    Now API is built to handle a large number of requests efficiently, enabling applications to scale seamlessly as demand increases.
  • Ease of Use
    The API provides a straightforward and consistent interface for deploying and managing projects, which simplifies development processes.
  • Integration
    The API integrates well with other Vercel services and third-party tools, enhancing the developer experience and streamlining workflows.
  • Speed
    It's designed to optimize deployment speed, allowing rapid iterations and minimizing downtime during updates.
  • Comprehensive Documentation
    Vercel provides thorough documentation for the Now API, aiding developers in quickly understanding and utilizing its capabilities.

Possible disadvantages of Now API

  • Learning Curve
    For developers not familiar with Vercel's ecosystem, there might be an initial learning curve to fully grasp all functionalities.
  • Rate Limits
    Like many APIs, Now API has rate limits, which can restrict the number of requests and affect applications with high demand.
  • Dependency on Vercel
    Using Now API heavily ties your deployment process to Vercel, which might be a concern if you aim for platform independence.
  • Cost
    While there are free tiers, extensive use of Vercel's services through the API may incur costs, which need to be factored into budget planning.
  • Limited Control
    The API abstracts much of the deployment process, potentially limiting the level of detailed control developers might have over certain configurations.

Serverless videos

Thoughts on Zero V3, Instant Page and Serverless 1.37!

Now API videos

No Now API videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

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Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Serverless and Now API)
Developer Tools
85 85%
15% 15
Open Source
100 100%
0% 0
Project Management
0 0%
100% 100
Productivity
83 83%
17% 17

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Serverless seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 39 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.

Serverless mentions (39)

  • Show HN: Winglang – a new Cloud-Oriented programming language
    GP may have been referring to Serverless Framework (http://serverless.com//). - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • Invocation error - can't find any results helping me to solve this issue
    I deployed a lambda and http api gateway using a serverless.com (sls) template as a start. I get the following error when it processes a specific request:. Source: over 1 year ago
  • Deploying Lambdas from Zipped Code on S3 vs Image Repository
    Have you tried serverless.com ? It lets you have infrastructure as code. Source: about 2 years ago
  • [p] I built an open source platform to deploy computationally intensive Python functions as serverless jobs, with no timeouts
    - With Lambda, you manage creating and building the container yourself, as well as updating the Lambda function code. There are tools out there such as sst or serverless.com which help streamline this. Source: over 2 years ago
  • AWS Lambda, a good host for a rest API?
    If you'd like to use Lambda, usually you need to engineer FOR it, from day one, you don't (often) get to choose some other framework and shoehorn it into Lambda and Serverless. There's some great frameworks to help deploy code into Lambda easily and create REST endpoints for things, one such frameworks is serverless.com that helps easily deploy to it, but it lacks a framework for doing REST that also supports... Source: over 2 years ago
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Now API mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of Now API yet. Tracking of Now API recommendations started around Mar 2021.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Serverless and Now API, you can also consider the following products

Nimbella - Simple serverless cloud for developers

Webscript.io - Webscript.io is a website that hosts LUA scripts that you can invoke from the web.

Webiny - The Enterprise CMS platform that you can host on your cloud

WSS Knowledge - Documentation and knowledge base creation

Up by apex - Deploy serverless apps and APIs in seconds to AWS Lambda

Carina - Carina provides a hosted container environment, where users no longer worry about building, managing, and updating container environment.