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 8.4. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling holds a 10.8% mindshare in CS, compared to AWS Lambda’s 21.0% 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 45 Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling reviews

1,632 Views
1,401 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

AWS Lambda

Read 83 AWS Lambda reviews

4,528 Views
2,369 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

AWS Lambda

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

AWS Lambda and Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling both compete in the cloud computing category, with Lambda having the upper hand for users seeking serverless solutions, while EC2 is preferred for those requiring robust infrastructure management.

Features: AWS Lambda offers a serverless architecture, cost-efficient scaling, and robust integration capabilities, enabling quick deployments and flexibility in language support. It is ideal for automated, event-driven tasks without infrastructure management concerns. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling provides infrastructure as a service with significant control over deployment, load balancers integration, and elasticity, allowing resources to adjust based on demand, making it stable for traditional applications.

Room for Improvement: AWS Lambda could improve cold start latency, extend execution time limits beyond 15 minutes, and enhance integration with external providers and language support. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling needs enhancements in cost-efficiency, user interface, and integration capabilities, as users find the pricing model complex.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: AWS Lambda is praised for its ease of use and minimal setup, suitable for users with various technical backgrounds, while receiving generally strong customer support. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling, though requiring more initial setup, offers greater control over deployment. Its technical support receives mixed reviews.

Pricing and ROI: AWS Lambda employs a pay-as-you-go model without upfront infrastructure costs, presenting cost efficiency for projects with fluctuating demands. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling’s usage-based pricing can potentially be expensive if not managed well, yet provides significant ROI for businesses needing stable, scalable infrastructure.

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

Buyer's Guide

AWS Lambda vs. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

March 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

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Compute Service category, the mindshare of Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling is 10.8%, down from 12.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS Lambda is 21.0%, down from 23.2% 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

"The most valuable features include the availability of various services like compute, memory, and database services in the AWS landscape."

"Can handle traffic spikes so the system doesn't overload."

"Applications deployed on EC2 instances can easily integrate with other AWS services. For example, you can connect your EC2 Auto Scaling group to a tool like CloudWatch for health checks and anomaly detection."

"The support from Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling is very good."

"It's good performance-wise."

"The easy possibility to spin up runtimes according to the needs of the POC, getting a runtime up and running in an easy way, which is accessible over the internet, is valuable for our process."

"The product’s most valuable feature is the seamless resizing of web connection."

"The feature I found most valuable was the vertical and horizontal scaling."

More Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling pros

"The feature I found most valuable about Lambda is the fact that it's serverless."

"The solution is designed very well. You don't need to keep a server up. You just need some router to route your API request and Lambda provides a very well-designed feature to process the request."

"What I like best about AWS Lambda is that it's feature-rich, and I appreciate that. I also like that it's stable and supports many languages."

"Lambda has improved our organization by making it possible to transform data."

"It makes configurations more convenient as changes can be made through the environmental variables without altering the main code."

"The installation and configuration of the solution is straightforward."

"AWS Lambda is serverless."

"AWS Lambda is itself serverless, and it is connected to the API gateway, and you can directly call the API through the API gateway and connect through AWS Lambda."

More AWS Lambda pros

Cons

"There is room for improvement in the scalability."

"If your EC2 instance doesn't boot up, you're in the dark about what's happening. It would be amazing if you could get a view of the console to see the status. There's something called the AWS Console, which is a web portal. I would like to see a virtual screen of an instance that hasn't started properly, so I can see where it crashed."

"The tool must provide proper guidelines to troubleshoot connectivity issues."

"I would like to see the security portal improved in the future."

"What could be improved in Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling is its fees."

"Sometimes the configuration is not intuitive."

"The primary area for improvement is the pricing model."

"The product's technical support needs to be better."

More Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling cons

"My engineers work with it on a daily basis. I just don't have enough depth of knowledge about what kinds of edge cases they may have tried and found lacking. There may be some issues with some language support at one point or another because we couldn't get the underlying libraries in there. A lot of what we do is either in JavaScript, Python, or some of the non-compiled languages. I'm not sure if we've ever tried building a C# solution, for instance, in Lambda or a Java solution in Lambda. It doesn't mean those aren't its capabilities. I would rather refer to my engineers for where the boundaries are."

"Another challenge I've noticed is that there is a limit to the environment variables such as the 4 KB limit. Although, the advice is to use parameters or other things to store the details when the limit has exceeded the data, this adds additional intensity to the application. If the size limits for environment variables can be revealed, it would be helpful. Even if we have to pay for it, at least we would know that we are not dealing with latency. So, I would like to see the size of the environment variables increased."

"If it is a specific ETL process or a long-term one, then AWS Lambda is not a good option."

"We've had to revamp the way that it works due to that 15-minute timeout limitation."

"Regarding layers, you need to manually zip and install them. This step needs practice, and you might need to do it three to four times to get a hang of it."

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

"We need to invest time in learning the tool's language variant. We have encountered instances of downtime as well."

"Its price should be improved. Its pricing is on the higher side. I am not sure if it currently supports the Go language. If it doesn't support the Go language, they can introduce it."

More AWS Lambda cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of this product could be a little bit lower."

"It's cost-effective."

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

"The solution pricing varies by service region is mid-range."

"The product is quite expensive."

"The product is expensive."

"The pricing is not fixed and it is based on usage."

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

More Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling pricing and cost advice

"This is a product that is pay-per-use, as opposed to a licensing fee."

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

"AWS Lambda is cheap."

"You're not paying for a server if you're not using it, which is another reason I like it. So, you're not paying if you're not using it. It scales, and you're charged based on usage. It all depends on the use case. Some can be extremely inexpensive if you have very low volume transaction rates. That way, you don't have to fire up and absorb the cost of the servers just sitting there waiting for a transaction to come through. You're only paying when you use it. So, depending upon the use model, Lambda could be highly efficient relative to an EC2 solution. You don't have to have things reallocated."

"The fees are volume-based."

"I think the price is okay. However, if they add more functionality, they can have better prices. In fact, they should have better and more flexible packages for clients who have greater consumption of Lambda."

"Lambda is an affordable solution. They offer free requests every month and charge per the compute time. If you are working in a big organization, usually AWS offer a savings plan where you get approximately 70% discount on pricing."

"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."

More AWS Lambda pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

24%

Computer Software Company

14%

Government

University

Educational Organization

69%

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...

See all answers

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

The pricing structure from AWS is really complex and depends on factors like the region and specific services used. Prices can vary significantly even within the same service across different locat...

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What needs improvement with Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling?

There is a need for improvement in understanding the pricing structure, as it is complex and depends on several factors such as the location of data centers.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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?

AWS Lambda is cheaper compared to running an instance continuously. You only pay for what you use, making it cost-effective.

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 66% of the time

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Compared 7% of the time

Apache NiFi vs Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

Compared 5% of the time

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AWS Batch vs AWS Lambda

Compared 53% of the time

Apache NiFi vs AWS Lambda

Compared 16% of the time

Apache Spark vs AWS Lambda

Compared 10% 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

March 2025

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Buyer's Guide

AWS Lambda

March 2025

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Also Known As

AWS RAM

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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

March 2025

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