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AWS Fargate vs Amazon EC2 comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 2025

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
Ranking in Compute Service
6th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
67
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
AWS Fargate
Ranking in Compute Service
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Compute Service category, the mindshare of Amazon EC2 is 5.4%, down from 7.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS Fargate is 14.0%, down from 18.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Compute Service
 

Featured Reviews

KatlegoMabila - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers customization and flexibility with great support
Scalability depends on whether the client wants to scale up or scale down. It decreases resources based on demand. The great aspect of scalability is the flexibility to allow business success to optimize resource solutions and cost efficiency. Another crucial aspect of scalability is auto-scaling. When you have the opportunity to auto-scale, it can't always be available for everything. If you have chosen to integrate with auto-scaling, it's marvellous and doesn't require additional effort. Auto-scaling gives you the edge by using the capacity you have efficiently, scaling up or down as needed. These flexibilities within the EC2 feature instances of AWS play a crucial role in helping me utilize AWS EC2 Intelligent efficiently.
Subrata Mukherjee - PeerSpot reviewer
Boost demand response with cost-efficient serverless architecture
We are a venture builder company, and if we select AWS for our product. Our design is based on a serverless architecture model. ECS Fargate is the most convenient way in terms of scalability, integration, and cost control Thanks to the serverless model and easy integration features, a few…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I would recommend this solution to others who want to start using it."
"The serverless architecture solutions are most valuable, and the ability to start with little cost, and then expand as needed."
"The most valuable feature of Amazon EC2 is its ability to spin a new virtual machine in a few seconds."
"The flexibility of the security features is what is interesting."
"An advantage of Amazon is that it offers a wide range of infrastructure services with an easy way to configure them."
"The product is very mature and organized."
"I use it for NextCloud and for developer purposes."
"The most valuable features of Amazon EC2 are ease of use and the services offered."
"If you create your deployment with a good set of rules for how to scale in, you can just set it and forget it."
"We appreciate the simple use of containers within this solution, it makes managing the containers quick and easy."
"It allows for focusing on applications instead of managing infrastructure."
"AWS Fargate is a fully managed service, and it's very easy to use compared to other services like Elastic Beanstalk Service (EBS)."
"The most valuable feature of AWS Fargate is its ability to run on demand without the constant run time of basic resources."
"The most valuable feature of AWS Fargate is its ease of use."
"Fargate's integration with other AWS services is really good."
"I like their containerization service. You can use Docker or something similar and deploy quickly without the know-how related to, for example, Kubernetes. If you use AKS or Kubernetes, then you have to have the know-how. But for Fargate, you don't need to have the know-how there. You just deploy the container or the image, and then you have the container, and you can use it as AWS takes care of the rest. This makes it easier for those getting started or if you don't have a strong DevOps team inside your organization."
 

Cons

"Amazon EC2 is very expensive, and it would be helpful if they decreased the pricing."
"The scalability could improve."
"We found Amazon EC2 to be pricey."
"They can build automatic features for ENSS or network drive. They have the Control-M feature. Similarly, they should have a feature for the network drive that can be mapped. I have not seen such a feature. They have a lot of products but those are quite costly. There is no cheaper option available for the EC2 instance for syncing two drives. If these features are available, it would be good."
"The ease of migrating applications could be improved."
"It's not the best of the best because we still have issues with downtime. We still have issues with the cost of storage, with all these different instance styles, and how much it costs. They cost an arm and a leg the higher you go."
"Currently in the autoscaling process if we have multiple issues we are not able to connect some of the VPC through the SMS."
"Regarding availability, a noticeable improvement would be the possibility of more load balancing configurations and the deployment of more datacenters, mainly in Latin America."
"If there are any options to manage containers, that would be good. That relates more to the cost point. For example, over the next three months, I'll be making a comparison between solutions like CAST AI and other software-as-a-service platforms that offer Kubernetes management with an emphasis on cost reduction."
"There are features that could be added or enhanced."
"Service computing is not as straightforward compared to other computing services. It requires more effort to use effectively."
"I heard from my team that it's not easy to predict the cost. That is the only issue we have with AWS Fargate, but I think that's acceptable. AWS Fargate isn't user-friendly. Anything related to Software as a Service or microservice architecture is not easy to implement. You're required to have DevOps from your side to implement the solution. AWS Fargate is just a temporary solution for us. When we grow to a certain level, we may use AKS for better control."
"AWS Fargate's security features weren't the most important criteria or value we got from AWS Fargate."
"AWS Fargate could improve the privileged mode containers. We had some problems and they were not able to run."
"We would like to see some improvement in the process documents that are provided with this product, particularly for auto-scaling and other configuration tools that are a bit complicated."
"The main area for improvement is the cost, which could be lowered to be more competitive with other major cloud providers."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is not an expensive solution."
"We are using a pay-as-you-go model."
"The license fee for Amazon EC2 is higher than its competitors."
"Reducing the price of the solution could lead to an improvement."
"There is a license required to use this solution and we pay on a monthly basis."
"The price of Amazon EC2 could improve. The Google Cloud Platform is more cost-effective."
"The price is reasonable, but there is definitely an opportunity to lower it in instances which are of a higher configuration, because they have been typically used for the long term."
"The solution has different pricing models, and its cost differs when you purchase it for one year or three years."
"We would advise that this solution has a slightly-higher price point than others on the market. There is a free plan available for start-ups, but the free and lower range licensing models do not provide the full functionality."
"I rate the price of AWS Fargate a four out of five."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
23%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon EC2?
The scalability and elasticity are helpful.
What needs improvement with Amazon EC2?
The main thing that needs improvement is the cost. Other than that, there is nothing that needs improvement.
What do you like most about AWS Fargate?
The most valuable feature of Fargate is that it's self-managed. You don't have to configure your own clusters or deploy any Kubernetes clusters. This simplifies the initial deployment and scaling p...
What needs improvement with AWS Fargate?
The monitoring capabilities of AWS Fargate could be improved and made more robust. The error handling aspect sometimes causes issues and can get stuck during deployment, making the process not very...
What advice do you have for others considering AWS Fargate?
I would recommend AWS Fargate as an alternative to AWS Lambda for running loads or hosting a service. It is a good service for keeping instances running, which minimizes initial latency. Overall, I...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, EC2
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Netflix, Expedia, TimeInc., Novaris, airbnb, Lamborghini
Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Fargate vs. Amazon EC2 and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.