What's the Difference Between Amazon EC2 and AWS Lambda?
Compare Amazon EC2 and AWS Lambda 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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Amazon EC2
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AWS Lambda
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Category
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Compute, Virtual Machines |
Serverless, Functions |
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Description
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Secure and resizable compute capacity for virtually any workload |
Service for running code without thinking about servers or clusters |
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Best for
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Key features
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Pricing model
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On-Demand, Reserved, Spot, Savings Plans |
Pay-per-request + compute duration |
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Free tier
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Yes |
Yes |
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Expert take
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“EC2 gives you full control over the compute environment with 750+ instance types. For workloads that need sustained CPU, GPU acceleration, or specific OS configurations, EC2 remains the most flexible option on AWS.” |
“Lambda is best used for single-function microservices that are small, fast, and easy to maintain. For workloads with unpredictable traffic, short duration, or infrequent invocations, Lambda eliminates the need to manage infrastructure entirely.” |
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Product page
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When to use Amazon EC2 or AWS Lambda
Use Amazon EC2 when:
- Web hosting
- Batch processing
- HPC
- Machine learning training
- Gaming servers
Use AWS Lambda when:
- Event-driven processing
- API backends
- Data transformation
- Real-time file processing
Next steps with AWS for Compute
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