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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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.5
Amazon EC2 reduces long-term costs through scalability, efficient resource management, and decreased infrastructure expenses, enhancing innovation and agility.
Sentiment score
7.1
AWS Lambda offers cost savings and high ROI through its pay-as-you-go model, auto-scaling, and serverless infrastructure.
I would say I have saved more than a week with Amazon EC2 compared to my previous on-premises setup.
Architect at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.7
Amazon EC2 customer service satisfaction varies; premium support praised, free support criticized, and experiences differ based on needs.
Sentiment score
6.9
AWS Lambda support is efficient and knowledgeable, but some users find cost a barrier for higher service levels.
When we raise a ticket or have an issue, the support team is responsive.
Co-Founder and CTO at Gamucopia Creatives
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Amazon EC2's scalability impresses users with autoscaling, resource flexibility, and efficient cost-performance optimization for diverse organizational needs.
Sentiment score
7.8
AWS Lambda efficiently scales with demand, offering seamless serverless operations, integration with AWS services, but may become costly.
I would rate how scalable AWS Lambda is a nine on a scale from 1 to 10, where 1 would be the lowest and 10 would be the highest level of scalability.
Assistant Manager at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Whenever the number of requests increases, the system automatically scales up to the target we have set and scales down once the requests are resolved.
Co-Founder and CTO at Gamucopia Creatives
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Amazon EC2 is highly stable and reliable, with minor issues mitigated by best practices like multiple availability zones.
Sentiment score
8.1
AWS Lambda is highly stable, reliable, and integrates well, though limited by timeout constraints, rated 8-9 for stability.
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon EC2 faces criticism for complexity, high costs, and limited integration, with calls for better automation and innovation.
AWS Lambda users desire improved integration, user-friendliness, language support, execution speed, monitoring, setup, customization, and computational capabilities.
I have heard from multiple people that if you have an Amazon EC2 instance running and you stop it, the billing continues unless you terminate the Amazon EC2 instance.
Senior Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
I think improvements can be made to Amazon EC2 by increasing the memory, offering more instance types, and including GPUs as mentioned in the keynote.
Architect at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
AWS Lambda needs to improve cold start time.
Co-Founder and CTO at Gamucopia Creatives
 

Setup Cost

Amazon EC2 pricing is seen as cost-effective but complex, urging simplification for easier cost management and estimation.
AWS Lambda offers cost-effective, pay-per-use pricing, ideal for low-traffic workloads, with potential cost escalation if unmonitored.
 

Valuable Features

Amazon EC2 offers scalability, flexibility, and cost-efficiency with strong security, making it ideal for diverse workloads and AWS integration.
AWS Lambda provides serverless architecture, automatic scaling, seamless integrations, cost efficiency, and simplified deployment for efficient application development.
With the cloud, deployment is easy, and within a minute, we can deploy the server and give it to the developers so they can work on it right away after deployment.
Architect at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Amazon EC2 offers flexibility.
Senior Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
Automatic scaling is a valuable feature. When the number of requests increases, the system automatically scales up to the target we have set and scales down once the requests are resolved.
Co-Founder and CTO at Gamucopia Creatives
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon EC2
Ranking in Compute Service
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
71
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
AWS Lambda
Ranking in Compute Service
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
90
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2025, in the Compute Service category, the mindshare of Amazon EC2 is 10.8%, up from 6.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS Lambda is 15.2%, down from 20.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Compute Service Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
AWS Lambda15.2%
Amazon EC210.8%
Other74.0%
Compute Service
 

Featured Reviews

BS
AWS Architect at Corvit Networks
Elasticity and auto scaling enhance performance and cost efficiency
Amazon EC2 features that I have found the most valuable and useful include elasticity and scalability, a variety of instance types, pay-as-you-go pricing, security, isolation, AMIs, integration with other services, Spot Instances, and high availability of reliability, user data, and EC2 metadata. These include Amazon EC2 images, image builder, and auto scaling as instance types, pricing models, and security with VPC, IAM roles, and security groups. The most beneficial features of Amazon EC2 for cloud operations are EC2 Auto Scaling with Elastic Load Balancing, which allows scale up and scale down, maintains high availability, and optimizes costs. Auto Scaling provides fault tolerance, performance optimization, and cost efficiency. A real-world benefit is that an instance automatically handles the load. When traffic drops, it reduces the number of instances. Other highly beneficial Amazon EC2 features include Spot Instances, multiple instance types, custom AMIs, VPC security groups, strong network and access security, and Elastic IPs, which are the static IPs for dynamic instances.
Rajaraman Ramachandran - PeerSpot reviewer
Co-Founder and CTO at Gamucopia Creatives
Has enabled us to manage compute resources efficiently while supporting multiple languages
AWS Lambda needs to improve cold start time. Some AWS Lambda functions require a cold start, and if you need AWS Lambda to provide quick responses, you need some of the AWS Lambdas to be always on, which is risky. We need AWS Lambda's cold start time to be reduced so that we can use it much faster than now. We need a better way to handle the cold start. We should be able to start AWS Lambda much before in a predictable way instead of just calling and then having it start.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Transportation Company
8%
Educational Organization
7%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Educational Organization
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business30
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise28
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business35
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise43
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon EC2?
The scalability and elasticity are helpful.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon EC2?
Advice on Setup Cost, Pricing, and Licensing for EC2: 1. Start Small & Use Free Tier if Possible For new users or small applications, the AWS Free Tier offers limited EC2 usage free for 12 mont...
What needs improvement with Amazon EC2?
I think improvements can be made to Amazon EC2 by increasing the memory, offering more instance types, and including GPUs as mentioned in the keynote. In the future, I think you could explore quant...
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: December 2025.
879,259 professionals have used our research since 2012.