What's the Difference Between Amazon EventBridge and AWS Step Functions?

Compare Amazon EventBridge and AWS Step Functions side by side — features, pricing, and ideal use cases to help you choose the right product.

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Compare side-by-side

Comparisons	Amazon EventBridge	AWS Step Functions
Category	Application Integration, Event bus	Application Integration, Workflow orchestration
Description	Builds event-driven apps at scale across AWS, SaaS or existing systems	Visual workflows for distributed applications
Best for	Event-driven architectures SaaS integration Application integration Audit & monitoring	Workflow orchestration Data processing pipelines ML pipelines IT automation Microservices coordination
Key features	Event buses Schema registry Event replay Pipes Scheduler	Visual Workflow Studio Standard & Express workflows Error handling Parallel execution 200+ AWS service integrations
Pricing model	Pay per event published	Pay per state transition
Free tier	Yes	Yes
Expert take	“EventBridge is the evolution of CloudWatch Events with richer filtering, schema discovery, and SaaS integration. Use it when you need content-based routing (filter on event fields) or need to connect to third-party SaaS sources. For simple queue-based decoupling, SQS is lighter weight.” — Didier Durand, re:Post Top Contributor [profile]	“Standard workflows run up to a year with exactly-once execution and are ideal for long-running orchestrations. Express workflows handle high-volume, short-duration event processing at a lower cost with at-least-once semantics. Use Workflow Studio to build visually before writing ASL JSON.” — Gary McLean, re:Post Top Contributor [profile]
Product page	Learn more about Amazon EventBridge »	Learn more about AWS Step Functions »

When to use Amazon EventBridge or AWS Step Functions

Use Amazon EventBridge when:

Event-driven architectures
SaaS integration
Application integration
Audit & monitoring

Learn more about Amazon EventBridge »

Use AWS Step Functions when:

Workflow orchestration
Data processing pipelines
ML pipelines
IT automation
Microservices coordination

Learn more about AWS Step Functions »

Next steps with AWS for Application Integration

Create a free account

Start building with Amazon EventBridge and AWS Step Functions on the AWS Free Tier.

Get started with Amazon EventBridge

Builds event-driven apps at scale across AWS, SaaS or existing systems

Go to Amazon EventBridge

Get started with AWS Step Functions

Visual workflows for distributed applications

Go to AWS Step Functions

AWS product comparisons

What's the difference between Amazon Aurora and Amazon RDS?

Both are fully managed relational database services on AWS, but Aurora is a cloud-native engine built for higher performance and availability, while RDS gives you familiar open-source and commercial engines with less operational overhead than self-managed.

What's the difference between Amazon DynamoDB and Amazon RDS?

DynamoDB is a serverless NoSQL database for applications with well-defined access patterns that need consistent single-digit millisecond performance. RDS is a managed relational database for applications that need SQL, joins, and transactional integrity across multiple engines.

What's the difference between Amazon DynamoDB and Amazon Keyspaces?

Both are fully managed, serverless-capable NoSQL databases on AWS. DynamoDB is AWS-native with its own API and data model; Keyspaces is Apache Cassandra-compatible, letting you use existing Cassandra drivers, tools, and expertise.

What are the differences between Amazon DynamoDB and Amazon DocumentDB?

Both are fully managed NoSQL databases on AWS, but they serve different data models. DynamoDB is a key-value store optimized for known access patterns at massive scale; DocumentDB is a document database for flexible JSON schemas with MongoDB compatibility.

What's the difference between Amazon DocumentDB and Amazon Neptune?

Both handle semi-structured data, but they're optimized for different query patterns. DocumentDB stores and queries JSON documents; Neptune stores and traverses relationships between entities.

What's the difference between Amazon Aurora and Amazon RDS?

Both are fully managed relational database services on AWS, but Aurora is a cloud-native engine built for higher performance and availability, while RDS gives you familiar open-source and commercial engines with less operational overhead than self-managed.

What's the difference between Amazon Aurora and Amazon Neptune?

Both are purpose-built, fully managed AWS databases, but they solve fundamentally different problems. Aurora handles structured relational data with SQL; Neptune handles highly connected data where relationships between entities are the primary query pattern.

What's the difference between Amazon Aurora and Amazon DynamoDB?

Both are fully managed AWS database services, but they serve fundamentally different data models and access patterns. Aurora is a relational database for structured data with relationships; DynamoDB is a NoSQL key-value store built for single-digit millisecond performance at any scale.

What's the difference between Amazon RDS and Amazon Redshift?

Both run SQL queries, but they're optimized for fundamentally different workloads. RDS handles transactional operations (inserts, updates, lookups) for your application. Redshift handles analytical queries (aggregations, scans, joins across billions of rows) for your data team.

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