AWS Lambda vs Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling comparison

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling and AWS Lambda are both solutions in the Compute Service category. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.8, while AWS Lambda is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.5. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling holds a 10.5% mindshare in CS, compared to AWS Lambda’s 21.3% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of AWS Lambda users who would recommend it.

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

Read 46 Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling reviews

1,507 Views
1,275 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

AWS Lambda

Read 88 AWS Lambda reviews

3,782 Views
2,037 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

AWS Lambda

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 2025

AWS Lambda and Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling both cater to server management without direct infrastructure oversight, competing in the cloud services domain. Lambda has the upper hand due to its serverless structure and lower operational costs, which appeal to developers seeking agility and scalability.

Features: AWS Lambda offers a serverless architecture that simplifies deployment without the need to manage infrastructure, supports multiple programming languages, and ensures scalability. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling focuses on resource management through automatic capacity adjustment to maintain performance, providing flexibility and high availability for traffic spikes.

Room for Improvement: AWS Lambda can improve its external integration capabilities, enhance security, and address cold-start delays. It also needs a broader language support range and an enhanced user interface. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling users express concerns about its pricing structure, particularly for unoptimized scaling usage. There's a call for improved technical support and better setup documentation.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: AWS Lambda is praised for its straightforward deployment in public cloud environments, though users note variability in technical support quality. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling is also easy to deploy but needs improvements in technical support, with users seeking more intuitive guidance during deployment.

Pricing and ROI: AWS Lambda's pay-per-use model makes it cost-effective for fluctuating workloads, offering strong ROI by minimizing server maintenance costs. It is generally inexpensive for small applications. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling has a flexible usage-based pricing model, yielding cost savings if well-managed but can become costly with continuous scaling, impacting ROI if not optimized.

To learn more, read our detailed AWS Lambda vs. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

AWS Lambda vs. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

April 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

Ranking in Compute Service

3rd

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

8.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

AWS Lambda

Ranking in Compute Service

1st

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Compute Service category, the mindshare of Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling is 10.5%, down from 13.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS Lambda is 21.3%, up from 21.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Compute Service

Featured Reviews

Erick Karanja

Technical Lead at Cellulant Kenya

Scaling is as easy as hitting a button and setup is straightforward

AWS has already made improvements. In the past, if you provisioned a large EC2 instance and underutilized it, you still paid a premium. Now, AWS encourages using Kubernetes, where you primarily pay for the compute power you actually use in production. There is room for improvement. You might end up paying a high price if you're not careful and you provision a server that's underutilized. AWS has left it to engineers to figure out solutions. If you find the cost too high, you can move to Kubernetes, which might be a better solution for you than large EC2 instances. So, the improvements need to come from the user side, not the provider. Software engineers and engineering teams need to know their limits with EC2 instances. They need to recognize when it's time to transition their applications to Kubernetes. This means building with the cloud in mind from the start, making it easier to move solutions to the cloud without suffering upgrades and integration issues.

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Wai L Lin O

Cloud Engineer - Supervisor at KBZ Bank

A serverless solution with easy integration features

We use AWS Lambda because it provides a solution for our needs without requiring us to manage our infrastructure. With the tool, we only pay for the resources we use. Additionally, it is straightforward to implement and integrates with other services like API Gateway. The tool's serverless nature has had the most significant impact on our workflow. I find it particularly attractive because it eliminates the need for managing servers. In my previous experience, managing upgrades and updates was quite challenging. The solution's integration process with other AWS services was relatively easy. We primarily use AWS services such as EventBridge for scheduling processes and log management.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"One of the most important benefits is that a company can optimize resources because Auto Scaling deploys resources when needed. For example, for Black Friday, a company can deploy 100 servers for a couple of days. When Black Friday is over, the company can delete those servers."

"The product is flexible."

"What we have found most valuable are the purchasing of usage at the time and small storage."

"The auto-scaling feature is particularly useful. Additionally, CloudWatch and CloudTrail are also important features for us."

"The solution includes many features for configuring networks and VPCs."

"It's good performance-wise."

"It uses features like target tracking scaling policy, which automatically maintains CPU utilization levels."

"The most useful feature is elasticity. You can scale up or down based on traffic."

More Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling pros

"We have no issues with the technical support."

"Amazon takes care of the scalability. That's the right way. It's automatic and it's fully managed. That's one benefit of Lambda."

"The automation feature is valuable."

"The solution works for small applications. It is a serverless tool that is quick to spin up. We needn’t consider anything in the bag."

"The solution is highly scalable."

"It is easy to use."

"By using Lambda, we can use Python code and the Boto3 solution."

"The stability is good."

More AWS Lambda pros

Cons

"There is room for improvement in the pricing model."

"The product's setup is complex for an intermediate user."

"We would like to see improvement in the UI for this solution, so that it is more user-friendly."

"Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling offers various benefits but lacks certain features for fine-grained customization compared to other cloud providers like GCP. Users are constrained by predefined instance families in EC2 when selecting instance types for scaling. Unlike GCP, where users can independently scale resources such as memory or CPU, EC2 doesn't offer this flexibility."

"The solution could improve by having more automation. Nowadays there is a vast variety of automation. Additionally, infrastructure monitoring could improve."

"As we are transitioning to managing containerized applications, the solution could improve by adding more managed container services as a feature in the solution."

"Automation is very hard."

"Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling could improve by adding better integration features with the other services. Additionally, if the alarms could be triggered from other services this would be beneficial."

More Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling cons

"The overall performance of this solution could be improved. We would also like to have better integration with other AWS features."

"I would like to see improvements in AWS Lambda's stability and setup processes, as there were some complexities encountered initially."

"Having a better preview would be helpful."

"Security needs to be improved."

"The running time of AWS Lambda runs fine. It takes around five minutes but it would be great if that time could be extended."

"I have seen some drawbacks with certain integrations."

"AWS Lambda could be improved by increasing the size of the payload. Also, sometimes Lambda doesn't implement well for bigger solutions."

"There is room for improvement in user-friendliness. When comparing this solution to others it is not as user-friendly."

More AWS Lambda cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licences for this solution are based on the number of instances. This determines the EC2 type that is used and this is then priced accordingly."

"The tool's pricing is good and not expensive."

"I have not explored the price of the solution extensively, but from what I have seen the price is alright."

"Pricing could be a little bit more competitive."

"There is no specific pricing for Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling, but we have to pay for the number of machines getting scaled up."

"Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling uses a pay-as-you-go pricing model."

"It's cost-effective."

"The solution is less expensive than a few competitors."

More Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling pricing and cost advice

"AWS Lambda cost is pretty decent."

"Price-wise, AWS Lambda is very cheap. It's not free, but it's not that expensive."

"AWS is slightly more expensive than Azure."

"AWS Lambda is a very inexpensive solution. They charge for the number of times we run it. If you run AWS Lambda for one time, they charge around 50 cents or 25 cents for the use. I don't know the exact price, but it's less than a dollar."

"The price of the solution is reasonable."

"The cost is based on runtime."

"The pricing varies based on the specific solution you're implementing, and in comparison to the value it provides, the overall cost is reasonable."

"For licensing, we pay a yearly subscription."

More AWS Lambda pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

26%

Computer Software Company

15%

Government

Real Estate/Law Firm

Educational Organization

68%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling?

The solution removes the need for hardware. We can easily create servers or machines. Just by clicking or specifying our requirements, like memory size or disk space, it's set up for us. The tool e...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling?

The pricing of Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling is moderate. It's not too expensive because we only pay for what we use. While there are cheaper options, the services provided are worth the cost. Previously...

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What needs improvement with Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling?

While Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling is continually updated and has improved over time, the dashboard has become more complex and tricky for new users. The interface was easier to navigate in earlier vers...

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Which is better, AWS Lambda or Batch?

AWS Lambda is a serverless solution. It doesn’t require any infrastructure, which allows for cost savings. There is no setup process to deal with, as the entire solution is in the cloud. If you use...

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What do you like most about AWS Lambda?

The tool scales automatically based on the number of incoming requests.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Lambda?

The pricing of AWS Lambda is reasonable. It's beneficial and cost-effective for users regardless of the number of instances used.

See all answers

Comparisons

AWS Fargate vs Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

Compared 68% of the time

AWS Batch vs Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

Compared 6% of the time

Apache NiFi vs Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

Compared 6% of the time

More Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling Competitors

AWS Batch vs AWS Lambda

Compared 53% of the time

Apache NiFi vs AWS Lambda

Compared 17% of the time

Apache Spark vs AWS Lambda

Compared 11% of the time

Amazon EC2 vs AWS Lambda

Compared 4% of the time

Google Cloud Dataflow vs AWS Lambda

Compared 3% of the time

More AWS Lambda Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

May 2025

Download Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling product report

Buyer's Guide

AWS Lambda

May 2025

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Also Known As

AWS RAM

No data available

Overview

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling helps you maintain application availability and allows you to automatically add or remove EC2 instances according to conditions you define. ... Dynamic scaling responds to changing demand and predictive scaling automatically schedules the right number of EC2 instances based on predicted demand.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

AWS Lambda is a compute service that lets you run code without provisioning or managing servers. AWS Lambda executes your code only when needed and scales automatically, from a few requests per day to thousands per second. You pay only for the compute time you consume - there is no charge when your code is not running. With AWS Lambda, you can run code for virtually any type of application or backend service - all with zero administration. AWS Lambda runs your code on a high-availability compute infrastructure and performs all of the administration of the compute resources, including server and operating system maintenance, capacity provisioning and automatic scaling, code monitoring and logging. All you need to do is supply your code in one of the languages that AWS Lambda supports (currently Node.js, Java, C# and Python).

You can use AWS Lambda to run your code in response to events, such as changes to data in an Amazon S3 bucket or an Amazon DynamoDB table; to run your code in response to HTTP requests using Amazon API Gateway; or invoke your code using API calls made using AWS SDKs. With these capabilities, you can use Lambda to easily build data processing triggers for AWS services like Amazon S3 and Amazon DynamoDB process streaming data stored in Amazon Kinesis, or create your own back end that operates at AWS scale, performance, and security.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers

Netflix

Buyer's Guide

AWS Lambda vs. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

April 2025

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