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AWS Lambda vs Amazon EC2 comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on May 21, 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 Lambda
Ranking in Compute Service
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
88
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 Lambda is 21.2%, up from 20.5% 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.
Andrew-Wong - PeerSpot reviewer
Convenience in deployment process with room for code preview improvement
Having a better preview would be helpful. Sometimes, if my Lambda code is too big, it can be inconvenient as I'm unable to see my code when it exceeds a certain size. AWS has a limit, like a three-megabyte limit, beyond which I cannot view or edit the code easily.

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 feature of Amazon EC2 is its ability to spin a new virtual machine in a few seconds."
"I would recommend this solution to others who want to start using it."
"Amazon EC2 allows us to create different regions and availability zones based upon application needs."
"The best features of Amazon EC2 are its high performance and security."
"I like the AMI-related features. A very good feature of this solution is the customizable AMI. It is a very good feature provided by Amazon. The encryption technologies are also very good. We are using KMS, etc."
"Its ease of use is valuable."
"Amazon EC2's flexibility and ease of configuration were found to be very valuable."
"EC2 instances on AWS allow users to run virtual servers based on the CPU, memory, storage, and networking capacity."
"The programming language and the integration with other AWS services are the most valuable features."
"The basic feature that I like is that there is no server installation. It also has good support for various languages, such as Java, .NET, C#, and Python."
"The most valuable features of AWS Lambda are a serverless and event-driven architecture."
"It's a serverless solution which is the best feature. It helps us because it offers free aspects. From the infrastructure perspective, it helps us manage costs. There is no overhead of estimating how much infrastructure we're going to need. We can focus on building the business functionality that we want to build."
"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."
"Lambda is trigger-based, which means it only activates when accessed, ensuring cost savings."
"I think the most valuable feature is the agility of the solution."
"It is serverless and scalable. It can scale infinitely. You don't have to worry about the size of the servers that you're pre-allocating. You don't have to build server scale-out models. Auto scale and other similar features are just inherent in Lambda. So, for atomic and fairly non-persistent transactional units of work, Lambda works very well."
 

Cons

"The support could be more responsive."
"The solution is pretty expensive."
"We have had some downtime using the solution."
"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."
"The solution’s pricing and downtimes could be improved."
"Accessibility must be improved."
"EC2 could be improved with easier migration."
"The product could benefit from offering more mixed instance types that combine features from different series to suit diverse workload requirements better."
"There is room for improvement in user-friendliness. When comparing this solution to others it is not as user-friendly."
"We need to better understand Lambda for different scenarios. We need some joint effort between Amazon and the users to have the users identify how they can really leverage Lambda. It's not about Lambda itself; it's about the practice, the guidance. There needs to be very good documentation. From the user perspective, what exists now is not always enough."
"There were some timeout issues with AWS Lambda as the options provided didn't suit our business cases."
"I want to see support for longer applications. I need the 15-minute time-out window to improve."
"The first time Lambda is started up, it takes some time to spin up an instance for serving the consumer requests. AWS has been trying to solve this in a variety of ways but have not yet managed to do so."
"They should work on the solution's stability and pricing."
"The running time of AWS Lambda runs fine. It takes around five minutes but it would be great if that time could be extended."
"We've had to revamp the way that it works due to that 15-minute timeout limitation."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are paying about $1,500 a month for one of the services."
"Reducing the price of the solution could lead to an improvement."
"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."
"Pricing appears to be cheap, however, it is extremely difficult in calculating what something will cost."
"EC2 pricing is somewhat transparent, in that AWS provides pricing for all instance types. However, the number of pricing options can be confusing."
"The licensing of Amazon EC2 is expensive. Microsoft Windows Servers are expensive to license."
"The tool's pricing is not cheap."
"The pricing of this solution is variable. There is an open-source variant that is accessible via the public cloud, and then tiers that range in price depending on the level and amount of usage that is required."
"It costs maybe less than $10 per month in my use case."
"The solution is free of cost for the first year, and after that, it becomes expensive."
"AWS Lambda is inexpensive."
"The solution follows a pay-as-you-go licensing model, which results in cost savings."
"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."
"It computes by the cycle, and it's very cheap."
"The price is expensive and is based on usage. The more users you have the higher the cost."
"The price of AWS Lambda is priced very low."
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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%
Educational Organization
57%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
4%
 

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.
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...
What do you like most about AWS Lambda?
The tool scales automatically based on the number of incoming requests.
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.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, EC2
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Netflix, Expedia, TimeInc., Novaris, airbnb, Lamborghini
Netflix
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Lambda vs. Amazon EC2 and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,874 professionals have used our research since 2012.