Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Serverless VS The Unsplash API

Compare Serverless VS The Unsplash API and see what are their differences

Serverless logo Serverless

Toolkit for building serverless applications

The Unsplash API logo The Unsplash API

No-limits, do-what-you-want API for access to 200K+ HD pics.
  • Serverless Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-06
  • The Unsplash API Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-09-20

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.

The Unsplash API features and specs

  • High-Quality Images
    Unsplash offers a diverse collection of high-quality, curated photos that can enhance the visual appeal of applications and websites.
  • Free to Use
    The API allows developers to access a wide range of images for free, which is beneficial for startups and developers with limited budgets.
  • Documentation
    The Unsplash API comes with comprehensive and easy-to-understand documentation, making the integration process smoother for developers.
  • Search Functionality
    The API provides robust search and filtering options, allowing developers to find specific images based on keywords, color, and other parameters.
  • Regular Updates
    Unsplash regularly updates its image library, ensuring a fresh supply of content for developers to access and utilize.

Possible disadvantages of The Unsplash API

  • Rate Limiting
    The API imposes rate limits, which can restrict the number of requests made in a given time frame, potentially affecting applications with high demands.
  • Attribution Requirement
    Developers are required to provide proper attribution to photographers, which may not align seamlessly with the design or user experience of some applications.
  • Limited Image Types
    The platform primarily focuses on stock photography and may not provide specialized or niche images needed for certain project requirements.
  • Potential for Quality Variation
    While most images are high-quality, the open nature of the platform means there might be some variance in image quality and style.
  • Dependency on Third-Party
    Relying on an external API means any downtime or changes in the API can impact the application’s functionality and user experience.

Serverless videos

Thoughts on Zero V3, Instant Page and Serverless 1.37!

The Unsplash API videos

Using the Unsplash API - Tutorial

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Serverless and The Unsplash API)
Developer Tools
81 81%
19% 19
APIs
0 0%
100% 100
Open Source
100 100%
0% 0
Web App
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using Serverless and The Unsplash API. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
Log in or Post with

Social recommendations and mentions

Serverless might be a bit more popular than The Unsplash API. We know about 39 links to it since March 2021 and only 31 links to The Unsplash API. 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: over 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
View more

The Unsplash API mentions (31)

  • A Weather Clock (with Alarms) for ESP32 / Raspberry Pi Pico Implemented with Arduino Framework
    ... // ##### // # you will need to either // # . Enable and complete the following "secret" block // # . Or create and complete the "secret" block in the file `_secret.h` // ##### #if false // ---------------------- // !!! "secret" block !!! // ---------------------- // // ***** // * you can setup WIFI_SSID / WIFI_PASSWORD; for ESP32, if WIFI_SSID not defined, will use WiFiManager to get WiFi SSID and... - Source: dev.to / 12 days ago
  • Show HN: A pure WebGL image editor with filters, crop and perspective correction
    Nice. I tried it with an image from Unsplash. Maybe you can use the Unsplash API[1] to give people an example to play with. [1]: https://unsplash.com/developers. - Source: Hacker News / 24 days ago
  • Connecting AI Agent with UI - State Management🧩
    Unsplash Account - it's free Now to generate images based on your prompts, create an account in unsplash, and create your new application and access api key token to fetch the images through url, which hepls to generate images based on the url encoding, which will be handled through the state management. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • 20 Free APIs to Kickstart Your Side Projects
    Use it for: Stunning blog visuals, photography apps, or creative portfolios. Https://unsplash.com/developers. - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • Show HN: AI-generated images that look like real life
    [1]: https://unsplash.com/developers. - Source: Hacker News / 8 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

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

Nimbella - Simple serverless cloud for developers

API List - A collective list of APIs. Build something.

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

PublicAPIs - Explore the largest API directory in the galaxy

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

Unsplash - Unsplash is a website with high-quality free HD images. It has a catalog of more than three hundred thousand striking images that are neatly organized with tags. Read more about Unsplash.