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 10.5% 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

1,632 Views
1,401 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

AWS Lambda

Read 85 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 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

8.4

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

"The initial setup is straightforward."

"The most valuable features are that it is stable, flexible, and reliable."

"Service for launching or terminating Amazon EC2 instances, with good scalability and stability."

"The solution incorporates ease of maintenance and reduction in operational overhead and costs. Patching is also easy."

"Most of what I've deployed are CI/CD pipelines. AWS is scalable. You can always increase or adjust the resources to meet the specific requirements. I also like choosing an instance in any location, preferably the closest one. We don't have any AWS locations in South Africa, but the latency is about the same as hosting in Europe."

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

"The solution is highly scalable."

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

More Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling pros

"AWS Lambda is entirely stable."

"The serverless computing feature eliminates the need to manage servers, provision, or scale."

"AWS Lambda's most valuable feature is serverless architecture."

"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."

"Thanks to this solution, we do not need to worry about hardware or resource utilization. It saves us time."

"I think the most valuable feature is the agility of the solution."

"AWS Lambda's best features are log analysis and event triggering and actioning."

"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

"When creating a new instance there is a set of questions that have to be answered, and this is something that can be simplified."

"EC2 is doing what it is intended to do, and I have no specific improvements to suggest."

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

"For future improvements, I suggest focusing on cost reduction."

"We have found that the sizing in Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling is far off. For example, we will see some at one terabyte and the other one is two terabytes. There is nothing between one and two terabytes. Sometimes it's a struggle if I need one and a half, I still am supposed to pay for two. There are five terabytes, six terabytes, and 12 terabytes, and if I need something at eight or nine, I'm still paying 30 to 40 percent more by taking the one which is 12 terabytes. Microsoft Azure does similar sizes but the gap can be more, such as six terabytes, and the next one is 12 terabytes."

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

"I would like to see a feature included that has the capability to clone when an instance is being terminated."

"The spinning up in the solution can be much faster...The product should have a faster scalability option."

More Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling cons

"AWS Lambda could improve by having no-code or low-code options because currently, you need to be able to write code well to use it."

"We don't have the inbuilt modules in AWS Lambda. If more modules were built into or integrated with AWS Lambda, that would help developers to code."

"The product could make the process of integration easier."

"The metrics and reporting for this solution could be improved."

"There were some timeout issues with AWS Lambda as the options provided didn't suit our business cases."

"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."

"AWS Lambda has a maximum execution timeout of 15 minutes, which is unsuitable for long-running tasks."

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

More AWS Lambda cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"AWS offered some credits, so we have been able to enjoy some of those benefits. The pricing was fair."

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

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

"Its price is affordable for enterprise customers."

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

"As far back as I can remember, I have experience with two types of subscriptions. The first was my personal AWS base, and the second was a corporate license. I can't say much about the corporate license, but I recall they sent the bill every month for the personal subscription, though I could be mistaken."

"Amazon EC2 instances can be very expensive."

"Compared to the performance, the price is quite high. I would rate it a ten because it is expensive. There are additional costs including bandwidth costs, data transfer costs, and load balancing costs."

More Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling pricing and cost advice

"Price-wise, AWS Lambda is a five out of ten."

"We only need to pay for the compute time our code consumes."

"The solution is free of cost for the first year, and after that, it becomes expensive."

"The cost is based on runtime."

"AWS Lambda is cheap."

"For licensing, we pay a yearly subscription."

"I would rate the tool’s pricing a nine out of ten. The solution’s pricing works on a pay-as-you-go basis."

"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."

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

67%

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...

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

AWS Fargate vs Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

Compared 67% of the time

AWS Batch vs Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

Compared 7% of the time

Apache NiFi vs Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

Compared 5% of the time

More Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling Competitors

AWS Batch vs AWS Lambda

Compared 52% of the time

Apache NiFi vs AWS Lambda

Compared 18% 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

April 2025

Download Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling product report

Buyer's Guide

AWS Lambda

April 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

April 2025

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