What's the Difference Between AWS CloudFormation and AWS Elastic Beanstalk?
Compare AWS CloudFormation and AWS Elastic Beanstalk 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 CloudFormation
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AWS Elastic Beanstalk
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Category
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Management & Governance, Infrastructure as code |
Compute, PaaS |
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Description
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Infrastructure-as-code service for AWS resources |
Easily migrates, deploys, and scales full-stack applications on AWS |
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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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“CloudFormation is the native IaC tool that supports every AWS resource on day one of launch. Use Change Sets to preview changes before applying, Drift Detection to find manual modifications, and StackSets to deploy the same template across hundreds of accounts and regions.” |
“Elastic Beanstalk is the right choice when you want full EC2 control (instance types, security groups, VPC settings) but don't want to wire up deployment pipelines from scratch. It manages the orchestration while you keep the configuration knobs.” |
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Product page
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When to use AWS CloudFormation or AWS Elastic Beanstalk
Use AWS CloudFormation when:
- Infrastructure as code
- Environment replication
- Disaster recovery
- CI/CD
Learn more about AWS CloudFormation »
Use AWS Elastic Beanstalk when:
- Web applications
- API backends
- Microservices
- Rapid deployment
Next steps with AWS for Management & Governance
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