What's the Difference Between AWS CDK and AWS SAM?
Compare AWS CDK and AWS SAM side by side — features, pricing, and ideal use cases to help you choose the right product.
Compare side-by-side
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Comparisons
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AWS CDK
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AWS SAM
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Category
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Developer Tools, Infrastructure as code |
Serverless, Framework |
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Description
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Infrastructure-as-code framework to model cloud resources |
Open-source framework for building serverless applications with shorthand syntax for functions, APIs, and event sources. |
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Best for
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Key features
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Pricing model
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No additional charge; pay for resources created |
No additional charge; pay for underlying resources |
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Free tier
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Yes |
Yes |
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Expert take
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“CDK lets developers define infrastructure in the same language as their application, with IDE autocomplete and type safety. L2 and L3 constructs encode AWS best practices (encryption, logging, least-privilege) by default. CDK Pipelines builds self-mutating CI/CD that deploys both app and infra changes.” |
“SAM extends CloudFormation with serverless-specific shorthand. A single SAM function definition generates the Lambda function, IAM role, API Gateway endpoint, and event source.” |
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Product page
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When to use AWS CDK or AWS SAM
Use AWS CDK when:
- Infrastructure as code
- Application scaffolding
- Reusable constructs
- Multi-stack deployments
Use AWS SAM when:
- Serverless development
- Local testing
- CI/CD for serverless
- Infrastructure as code
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