AWS Lambda vs IBM Cloud Functions

Likelihood to Recommend

[AWS Lambda] is very well suited for the projects that doesn't have any infra but needs it where short running processes are required. But if your application need to run continuously than this might not be the very apt tool for you.

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Ojas Elawadhi

Data Analyst

PaytmFinancial Services, 5001-10,000 employees

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IBM Cloud Functions [is] not the worse product on the IBM cloud. I decided to write this review as I thought it would be balanced. I would still use functions to set up a serverless architecture where execution time is pretty quick and the code is relatively simple.I wouldn't use IBM Cloud Functions for async calls obviously, as costs could be higher. The functions documentation is lacking in terms of CI/CD, and there are unexplainable errors occurring - like the network connection that I mentioned. So I wouldn't just rely on IBM Cloud Functions too much for the entire system, but make sure it's diversified.

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Verified User

Technician in Other

5001-10,000 employees

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Feature Rating Comparison

AWS Lambda

IBM Cloud Functions

Ease of building user interfaces

Scalability

Platform management overhead

Workflow engine capability

Platform access control

Services-enabled integration

Development environment creation

Development environment replication

Issue monitoring and notification

Issue recovery

Upgrades and platform fixes

Pros

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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Michael Jenkins

Senior Systems Reliability Engineer

The Walt Disney CompanyEntertainment, 10,001+ employees

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Great substitute for a simple API calls to run non-complicated code.
Easy way to run Python/Java/Javascript to get something done.
File validation.

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Verified User

Consultant in Professional Services

Computer Software Company, 51-200 employees

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Cons

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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Benjamin Plotkin

Technical Project Manager

California State University, NorthridgeEducation Management, 1001-5000 employees

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Billing can be a hassle, not the most responsive customer service/support team
Handles & executes most functionalities, but other platforms offer more scalability if you're seeking consistent and stable growth

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Verified User

Project Manager in Product Management

Internet Company, 51-200 employees

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Usability

AWS Lambda 8.9

Based on 14 answers

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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Verified User

Engineer in Research & Development

Fund-Raising Company, 1-10 employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Support Rating

AWS Lambda 8.3

Based on 24 answers

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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Verified User

Engineer in Engineering

Internet Company, 51-200 employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Alternatives Considered

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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Fedor Paretsky

Co-Founder/CEO

aspace, Inc.Computer Software, 1-10 employees

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ICF is a lightweight service and does not require runtime configurations
Scalable on demand and hence there is no need to pay for runtime costs

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Badheka, Amit

Information Technology and Services, 10,001+ employees

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Return on Investment

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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Verified User

Employee in Information Technology

Research Company, 1001-5000 employees

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It directly affected our expenses since we do not need to deploy and maintain a set of separate applications.
It allowed us to pay for only the amount of time cloud functions run.
It saved on maintenance and monitoring of the applications it replaced.

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Verified User

Team Lead in Information Technology

Financial Services Company, 51-200 employees

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Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

—

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

No

AWS Lambda Editions & Modules

Edition

128 MB	$0.0000000021¹
1024 MB	$0.0000000167¹
10240 MB	$0.0000001667¹

Per 1 ms

Additional Pricing Details

—

General

Free Trial

—

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

No

IBM Cloud Functions Editions & Modules

Edition

Basic Cloud Functions Rate	$0.00017¹
API Gateway Rate	Free

per second of execution

Additional Pricing Details

—

Rating Summary

AWS Lambda

IBM Cloud Functions

AWS Lambda

IBM Cloud Functions

AWS Lambda

IBM Cloud Functions

AWS Lambda

IBM Cloud Functions

Likelihood to Recommend

AWS Lambda

IBM Cloud Functions

Feature Rating Comparison

Ease of building user interfaces

Scalability

Platform management overhead

Workflow engine capability

Platform access control

Services-enabled integration

Development environment creation

Development environment replication

Issue monitoring and notification

Issue recovery

Upgrades and platform fixes

Pros

AWS Lambda

IBM Cloud Functions

Cons

AWS Lambda

IBM Cloud Functions

Usability

AWS Lambda

IBM Cloud Functions

Support Rating

AWS Lambda

IBM Cloud Functions

Alternatives Considered

AWS Lambda

IBM Cloud Functions

Return on Investment

AWS Lambda

IBM Cloud Functions

Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

Free/Freemium Version

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Entry-level set up fee?

AWS Lambda Editions & Modules

Edition

Additional Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

Free/Freemium Version

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Entry-level set up fee?

IBM Cloud Functions Editions & Modules

Edition

Additional Pricing Details

Rating Summary

Add comparison