AWS IoT Core vs. AWS Lambda

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
AWS IoT Core
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
AWS IoT Core is a managed cloud service that lets connected devices interact with cloud applications and other devices. It includes the Device Gateway and the Message Broker, which connect and process messages between IoT devices and the cloud. AWS IoT Core connects AWS and Amazon services like AWS Lambda, Amazon Kinesis, Amazon S3, Amazon SageMaker, Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon CloudWatch, AWS CloudTrail, Amazon QuickSight, and Alexa Voice Service to build IoT applications that gather, process,…
$0.08
Per Million Minutes
AWS Lambda
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
AWS Lambda is a serverless computing platform that lets users run code without provisioning or managing servers. With Lambda, users can run code for virtually any type of app or backend service—all with zero administration. It takes of requirements to run and scale code with high availability.
$NaN
Per 1 ms
Pricing
AWS IoT CoreAWS Lambda
Editions & Modules
Connectivity
$0.08
Per Million Minutes
Rules Engine
$0.15
Per Million Actions
Messaging
$1.00
Per Million Messages
128 MB
$0.0000000021
Per 1 ms
1024 MB
$0.0000000167
Per 1 ms
10240 MB
$0.0000001667
Per 1 ms
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
AWS IoT CoreAWS Lambda
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
AWS IoT CoreAWS Lambda
Considered Both Products
AWS IoT Core
Chose AWS IoT Core
It turns out that AWS IoT Core is the most mature solution on the market with the best variety of integration tools available. On the downside, it is not the cheapest platform existing out there. Amazon IoT Core is easy to start and set up, and our prior engagement with Amazon …
Chose AWS IoT Core
For our use case, we ended up with AWS because the human resources that were planning to be resourced on this particular project happened to have prior familiarity with the AWS ecosystem. The conversation became can we justify continuing with this ecosystem rather than pivoting …
AWS Lambda
Chose AWS Lambda
We really did not evaluate them against other products except a little Google research, we are a centralized AWS customer so it was a smooth and simple (even if blind) decision for us.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
AWS IoT CoreAWS Lambda
Internet of Things
Comparison of Internet of Things features of Product A and Product B
AWS IoT Core
8.2
15 Ratings
2% above category average
AWS Lambda
-
Ratings
IoT Device Management8.115 Ratings00 Ratings
Device Security8.215 Ratings00 Ratings
IoT Data Management7.915 Ratings00 Ratings
IoT Analytics8.413 Ratings00 Ratings
IoT Integration8.214 Ratings00 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
AWS IoT Core
-
Ratings
AWS Lambda
9.3
3 Ratings
3% below category average
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)00 Ratings9.03 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)00 Ratings9.52 Ratings
Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
AWS IoT Core
-
Ratings
AWS Lambda
6.1
3 Ratings
4% below category average
Dashboards00 Ratings6.73 Ratings
Standard reports00 Ratings6.52 Ratings
Custom reports00 Ratings5.02 Ratings
Function as a Service (FaaS)
Comparison of Function as a Service (FaaS) features of Product A and Product B
AWS IoT Core
-
Ratings
AWS Lambda
7.9
3 Ratings
3% below category average
Programming Language Diversity00 Ratings9.03 Ratings
Runtime API Authoring00 Ratings8.33 Ratings
Function/Database Integration00 Ratings8.33 Ratings
DevOps Stack Integration00 Ratings6.03 Ratings
Best Alternatives
AWS IoT CoreAWS Lambda
Small Businesses

No answers on this topic

IBM Cloud Functions
IBM Cloud Functions
Score 8.1 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies

No answers on this topic

Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 8.8 out of 10
Enterprises

No answers on this topic

Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 8.8 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
AWS IoT CoreAWS Lambda
Likelihood to Recommend
8.6
(15 ratings)
9.3
(48 ratings)
Usability
8.7
(4 ratings)
9.0
(13 ratings)
Support Rating
7.8
(4 ratings)
8.7
(20 ratings)
User Testimonials
AWS IoT CoreAWS Lambda
Likelihood to Recommend
Amazon AWS
End-to-end encryption is an amazing feature because we use IoT to connect to various devices in order to gather data/ stats in real-time. We're able to publish solutions with ease and at a faster rate because of AWS IoT Core. However, its inability to interact with other IoT tools is a big con that I would like them to improve upon.
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Amazon AWS
Scenarios where AWS Lambda is well suited: 1. When we need to run a periodic task few times in a day or every hour, we may deploy it on AWS Lambda so it would not increase load on our server which is handling client requests and at the same time we don't have to pay for AWS Lambda when it is not running. So, overall we only pay for few function invocations. 2. When some compute intensive processing is to be done but the number of requests per unit of time fluctuates. For example, we had deployed an AWS Lambda for processing images into different sizes and storing them on AWS S3 once user uploads them. Now, this is something that may happen few times every hour on a particular day or may not happen even once on other days. To handle this kind of tasks AWS Lambda is a better choice as we don't have to pay for the idle time of the server and also we don't have to worry about scaling when the load is high. Scenarios where AWS Lambda is not appropriate to use: 1. When we expect a large request volume continuously on the server. 2. When we don't want latency even in case of concurrent requests.
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Pros
Amazon AWS
  • AWS IoT Core integrates power analytics and an AI solution for sensor data processing.
  • Great protocol support including HTTPs and MQTT required to connect resource constraint IoT devices to cloud
  • High security standards during data transmission
  • Scalability and a great user community
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Amazon AWS
  • Lambda provides multiple methods for triggering functions, this includes AWS resources and services and external triggers like APIs and CLI calls.
  • The compute provided my Lambda is largely hands off for operations teams. Once the function is deployed, the management overhead is minimal since there are no servers to maintain.
  • Lambda's pricing can be very cost effective given that users are only charged for the time the function runs and associated costs like network or storage if those are used. A function that executes quickly and is not called often can cost next to nothing.
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Cons
Amazon AWS
  • Ability to integrate with Ethercalc software solution
  • Ability to introduce NFC toolchains and systems which could be utilized in iot modular gateway solutions like drones
  • Ability to reduce latency as the solution scales is very much needed
  • Hybrid solution which can integrate other existing iot solutions into AWS iot core
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Amazon AWS
  • Putting a significant portion of your codebase into AWS Lambda and taking advantage of the high level of integration with other AWS services comes with the risk of vendor lock-in.
  • While the AWS Lambda environment is "not your problem," it's also not at your disposal to extend or modify, nor does it preserve state between function executions.
  • AWS Lambda functions are subject to strict time limitations, and will be aborted if they exceed five minutes of execution time. This can be a problem for some longer-running tasks that are otherwise well-suited to serverless delivery.
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Usability
Amazon AWS
I give AWS IoT Core's overall usability this rating because it is very easy to use and is enjoyed by all of our staff. The only problem is that it sometimes glitches and it freezes a lot. So overall, the usability of AWS IoT Core is very good, and we will continue to use it.
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Amazon AWS
I give it a seven is usability because it's AWS. Their UI's are always clunkier than the competition and their documentation is rather cumbersome. There's SO MUCH to dig through and it's a gamble if you actually end up finding the corresponding info if it will actually help. Like I said before, going to google with a specific problem is likely a better route because AWS is quite ubiquitous and chances are you're not the first to encounter the problem. That being said, using SAM (Serverless application model) and it's SAM Local environment makes running local instances of your Lambdas in dev environments painless and quite fun. Using Nodejs + Lambda + SAM Local + VS Code debugger = AWESOME.
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Support Rating
Amazon AWS
It covers all the aspects of IoT services required for an IoT company. It supports all the industry-wide protocols for secure data transmission and integrates powerful AL and ML technology for data analytics. For data storage, Amazon S3 is a great solution. Strong tech support and user community. Since it is widely used as compared to other products, there is an abundance of training and learning material on the web.
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Amazon AWS
I have not needed support for AWS Lambda, since it is already using Python, which has resources all over the internet. AWS blog posts have information about how to install some libraries, which is necessary for some more complex operations, but this is available online and didn't require specific customer support for.
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Alternatives Considered
Amazon AWS
Azure IoT service provides more or less the same services as compared to AWS IoT core, however the costing of AWS lead us to continued usage of IoT core over Azure IoT services. Also, considering our existing technology stack is on AWS, it was a natural selection for better integration and ease of use.
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Amazon AWS
Azure Functions is another product that provides lambda functionality, but the documentation for some of Azure's products is quite hard to read. Additionally, AWS Lambda was one of the first cloud computing products on a large cloud service that implemented lambda functions, so they have had the most time to develop the product, increase the quality of service, and extend functionality to more languages. Amazon, by far, has the best service for Lambda that I know.
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Return on Investment
Amazon AWS
  • Gives confidence to prototype iot solutions across lots of devices in little time
  • Ability to meet requirements for managing a variety of communication protocols
  • Learning iot analytics and visualization for faster insights enablement
  • Onboarding devices and managing quickly without building inhouse solutions
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Amazon AWS
  • I was able to perform a lot of processing on data delivered from my website and little or no cost. This was a big plus to me.
  • Programming AWS Lambda is quite easy once you understand the time limits to the functions.
  • AWS Lambda has really good integration with the AWS S3 storage system. This a very good method of delivering data to be processed and a good place to pick it up after processing.
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