Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) vs. Azure Functions

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a web service that provides secure, resizable compute capacity in the cloud. Users can launch instances with a variety of OSs, load them with custom application environments, manage network access permissions, and run images on multiple systems.
$0.01
per IP address with a running instance per hour on a pro rata basis
Azure Functions
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
Azure Functions enables users to execute event-driven serverless code functions with an end-to-end development experience.
$18
per month approximately
Pricing
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)Azure Functions
Editions & Modules
Data Transfer
$0.00 - $0.09
per GB
On-Demand
$0.0042 - $6.528
per Hour
EBS-Optimized Instances
$0.005
per IP address with a running instance per hour on a pro rata basis
Carrier IP Addresses
$0.005 - $0.10
T4g Instances
$0.04
per vCPU-Hour Linux, RHEL, & SLES
T2, T3 Instances
$0.05 ($0.096)
per vCPU-Hour Linux, RHEL, & SLES (Windows)
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)Azure Functions
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)Azure Functions
Features
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)Azure Functions
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Product A and Product B
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
8.8
27 Ratings
7% above category average
Azure Functions
-
Ratings
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime9.625 Ratings00 Ratings
Dynamic scaling9.226 Ratings00 Ratings
Elastic load balancing9.625 Ratings00 Ratings
Pre-configured templates8.726 Ratings00 Ratings
Monitoring tools8.225 Ratings00 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images8.625 Ratings00 Ratings
Operating system support8.626 Ratings00 Ratings
Security controls8.726 Ratings00 Ratings
Automation8.316 Ratings00 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
-
Ratings
Azure Functions
10.0
1 Ratings
13% above category average
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
-
Ratings
Azure Functions
7.0
1 Ratings
16% above category average
Dashboards00 Ratings7.01 Ratings
Standard reports00 Ratings9.01 Ratings
Custom reports00 Ratings5.01 Ratings
Function as a Service (FaaS)
Comparison of Function as a Service (FaaS) features of Product A and Product B
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
-
Ratings
Azure Functions
8.8
1 Ratings
7% above category average
Programming Language Diversity00 Ratings9.01 Ratings
Runtime API Authoring00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Function/Database Integration00 Ratings9.01 Ratings
DevOps Stack Integration00 Ratings9.01 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)Azure Functions
Small Businesses
DigitalOcean Droplets
DigitalOcean Droplets
Score 9.4 out of 10
AWS Lambda
AWS Lambda
Score 8.4 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.2 out of 10
Enterprises
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.2 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)Azure Functions
Likelihood to Recommend
8.9
(73 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
9.2
(11 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.5
(12 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)Azure Functions
Likelihood to Recommend
Amazon AWS
Suitable for companies that are looking for performance at a competitive price, flexibility to switch instance type even with RI, flexibility to add-on IOPS, option to lower running cost with the regular introduction of new instance type that comes with higher performance but at a lower cost.
Read full review
Microsoft
They're great to embed logic and code in a medium-small, cloud-native application, but they can become quite limiting for complex, enterprise applications.
Read full review
Pros
Amazon AWS
  • Huge Diverse range of machine shapes are available which cater to our demand.
  • Ability to combine the machines and integrate them with any other service in AWS (Ex: RDS, S3)
  • Handling performance and scalability using auto-scaling, ELB configuration and high performance machine shapes.
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Microsoft
  • They natively integrate with many triggers from other Azure services, like Blob Storage or Event Grid, which is super handy when creating cloud-native applications on Azure (data wrangling pipelines, business process automation, data ingestion for IoT, ...)
  • They natively support many common languages and frameworks, which makes them easily approachable by teams with a diverse background
  • They are cheap solutions for low-usage or "seasonal" applications that exhibits a recurring usage/non-usage pattern (batch processing, montly reports, ...)
Read full review
Cons
Amazon AWS
  • The choices on AMIs, instance types and additional configuration can be overwhelming for any non-DevOps person.
  • The pricing information should be more clear (than only providing the hourly cost) when launching the instance. AWS DynamoDB gives an estimated monthly cost when creating tables, and I would love to see similar cost estimation showing on EC2 instances individually, as not all developers gets access to the actual bills.
  • The term for reserving instances are at least 12 months. With instance types changing so fast and better instances coming out every other day, it's really hard to commit to an existing instance type for 1 or more years at a time.
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Microsoft
  • My biggest complaint is that they promote a development model that tightly couples the infrastructure with the app logic. This can be fine in many scenarios, but it can take some time to build the right abstractions if you want to decouple you application from this deployment model. This is true at least using .NET functions.
  • In some points, they "leak" their abstraction and - from what I understood - they're actually based on the App Service/Web App "WebJob SDK" infrastructure. This makes sense, since they also share some legacy behavior from their ancestor.
  • For larger projects, their mixing of logic, code and infrastructure can become difficult to manage. In these situations, good App Services or brand new Container Apps could be a better fit.
Read full review
Usability
Amazon AWS
You an start using EC2 instances immediately, is so easy and intuitive to start using them, EC2 has wizard to create the EC2 instances in the web browser or if you are code savvy you can create them with simple line in the CLI or using an SDK. Once you are comfortable using EC2, you can even automate the process.
Read full review
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Amazon AWS
AWS's support is good overall. Not outstanding, but better than average. We have had very little reason to engage with AWS support but in our limited experience, the staff has been knowledgeable, timely and helpful. The only negative is actually initiating a service request can be a bit of a pain.
Read full review
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Amazon AWS
Amazon EC2 is super flexible compared to the PaaS offerings like Heroku Platform and Google App Engine since with Amazon EC2, we have access to the terminal. In terms of pricing, it's basically just the same as Google Compute Engine. The deciding factor is Amazon EC2's native integration with other AWS services since they're all in the same cloud platform.
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Microsoft
This is the most straightforward and easy-to-implement server less solution. App Service is great, but it's designed for websites, and it cannot scale automatically as easily as Azure Functions. Container Apps is a robust and scalable choice, but they need much more planning, development and general work to implement. Container Instances are the same as Container Apps, but they are extremely more limited in termos of capacity. Kubernetes Service si the classic pod container on Azure, but it requires highly skilled professional, and there are not many scenario where it should be used, especially in smaller teams.
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Return on Investment
Amazon AWS
  • It reduced the need for heavy on-premises instances. Also, it completely eliminates maintenance of the machine. Their SLA criteria are also matching business needs. Overall IAAS is the best option when information is not so crucial to post on the cloud.
  • It makes both horizontal and vertical scaling really easy. This keeps your infrastructure up and running even while you are increasing the capacity or facing more traffic. This leads to having better customer satisfaction.
  • If you do not choose your instance type suitable for your business, it may incur lots of extra costs.
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Microsoft
  • They allowed me to create solutions with low TCO for the customer, which loves the result and the low price, that helped me create solutions for more clients in less time.
  • You can save up to 100% of your compute bill, if you stay under a certain tenant conditions.
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ScreenShots