AWS Lambda vs. Microsoft Azure

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
AWS Lambda
Score 8.6 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
Microsoft Azure
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing platform and infrastructure for building, deploying, and managing applications and services through a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters.
$29
per month
Pricing
AWS LambdaMicrosoft Azure
Editions & Modules
128 MB
$0.0000000021
Per 1 ms
1024 MB
$0.0000000167
Per 1 ms
10240 MB
$0.0000001667
Per 1 ms
Developer
$29
per month
Standard
$100
per month
Professional Direct
$1000
per month
Basic
Free
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
AWS LambdaMicrosoft Azure
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsThe free tier lets users have access to a variety of services free for 12 months with limited usage after making an Azure account.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
AWS LambdaMicrosoft Azure
Considered Both Products
AWS Lambda
Chose AWS Lambda
AWS is a much more mature platform than Microsoft Azure but is a lot more rigid in the portability perspective. If you are in it for the long run then Lambda is great and the best choice.
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.
Chose AWS Lambda
Microsoft's Azure functions and Lambda occupy the same functionality conceptually. Both offer serverless functions, and can perform similar operations. Azure functions are better suited for Azure based infrastructure and Lambda is better suited for an AWS based setup. Lambda …
Microsoft Azure
Chose Microsoft Azure
I liked AWS Lambda. It allows us to host MVC applications serverless, whereas Microsoft Azure functions has a slightly different programming model which prevents me from hosting MVC apps easily without code changes as an Azure Function.

As a result, we use both, but we …
Chose Microsoft Azure
I would say that Azure stacks up pretty good and sometimes better in comparison to what Google Cloud Platform has to offer. I don't like GCP for its absurd licensing fees and it's expensive for just Using EC2 Instances. However, DigitalOcean and AWS can offer far better …
Chose Microsoft Azure
Azure was less developed but with our relationship and familiarity with the tool, it beat out the competition. The service itself has some areas that need to be improved but the current features are very promising. Given another year or two, it'll be up there with AWS and other …
Chose Microsoft Azure
We have settled with Microsoft Azure considered its effective administration and the ability to data visualization and analysis, together with the top-notch security/stability.
Chose Microsoft Azure
A few years ago we were a fairly large AWS shop. At a specific point the decision was made to go to Azure and we have been very happy with the outcome. Azure works better, integrates better, has better support and is cheaper that What we had with AWS. Simply put Azure is the …
Features
AWS LambdaMicrosoft Azure
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
AWS Lambda
9.0
7 Ratings
2% above category average
Microsoft Azure
-
Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)8.77 Ratings00 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)9.33 Ratings00 Ratings
Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
AWS Lambda
5.4
6 Ratings
11% below category average
Microsoft Azure
-
Ratings
Dashboards6.06 Ratings00 Ratings
Standard reports5.55 Ratings00 Ratings
Custom reports4.65 Ratings00 Ratings
Function as a Service (FaaS)
Comparison of Function as a Service (FaaS) features of Product A and Product B
AWS Lambda
8.5
7 Ratings
4% above category average
Microsoft Azure
-
Ratings
Programming Language Diversity9.07 Ratings00 Ratings
Runtime API Authoring8.17 Ratings00 Ratings
Function/Database Integration8.77 Ratings00 Ratings
DevOps Stack Integration8.07 Ratings00 Ratings
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Product A and Product B
AWS Lambda
-
Ratings
Microsoft Azure
8.5
27 Ratings
3% above category average
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime00 Ratings8.226 Ratings
Dynamic scaling00 Ratings8.725 Ratings
Elastic load balancing00 Ratings8.824 Ratings
Pre-configured templates00 Ratings8.225 Ratings
Monitoring tools00 Ratings8.326 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images00 Ratings8.424 Ratings
Operating system support00 Ratings9.026 Ratings
Security controls00 Ratings8.726 Ratings
Automation00 Ratings8.224 Ratings
Best Alternatives
AWS LambdaMicrosoft Azure
Small Businesses
IBM Cloud Functions
IBM Cloud Functions
Score 7.9 out of 10
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
Score 8.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.3 out of 10
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.3 out of 10
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
AWS LambdaMicrosoft Azure
Likelihood to Recommend
8.2
(52 ratings)
8.9
(96 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(17 ratings)
Usability
8.3
(17 ratings)
8.5
(36 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
6.8
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
8.7
(20 ratings)
8.0
(28 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
AWS LambdaMicrosoft Azure
Likelihood to Recommend
Amazon AWS
Lambda excels at event-driven, short-lived tasks, such as processing files or building simple APIs. However, it's less ideal for long-running, computationally intensive, or applications that rely on carrying the state between jobs. Cold starts and constant load can easily balloon the costs.
Read full review
Microsoft
Azure is particularly well suited for enterprise environments with existing Microsoft investments, those that require robust compliance features, and organizations that need hybrid cloud capabilities that bridge on-premises and cloud infrastructure. In my opinion, Azure is less appropriate for cost-sensitive startups or small businesses without dedicated cloud expertise and scenarios requiring edge computing use cases with limited connectivity. Azure offers comprehensive solutions for most business needs but can feel like there is a higher learning curve than other cloud-based providers, depending on the product and use case.
Read full review
Pros
Amazon AWS
  • No provisioning required - we don't have to pay anything upfront
  • Serverless deployment - it gets executed only when request comes and we pay only for the time the request is getting executed
  • Integrates well with AWS CloudWatch triggers so it is easy to setup scheduled tasks like cron jobs
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Microsoft
  • Microsoft Azure is highly scalable and flexible. You can quickly scale up or down additional resources and computing power.
  • You have no longer upfront investments for hardware. You only pay for the use of your computing power, storage space, or services.
  • The uptime that can be achieved and guaranteed is very important for our company. This includes the rapid maintenance for security updates that are mostly carried out by Microsoft.
  • The wide range of capabilities of services that are possible in Microsoft Azure. You can practically put or create anything in Microsoft Azure.
Read full review
Cons
Amazon AWS
  • Developing test cases for Lambda functions can be difficult. For functions that require some sort of input it can be tough to develop the proper payload and event for a test.
  • For the uninitiated, deploying functions with Infrastructure as Code tools can be a challenging undertaking.
  • Logging the output of a function feels disjointed from running the function in the console. A tighter integration with operational logging would be appreciated, perhaps being able to view function logs from the Lambda console instead of having to navigate over to CloudWatch.
  • Sometimes its difficult to determine the correct permissions needed for Lambda execution from other AWS services.
Read full review
Microsoft
  • The cost of resources is difficult to determine, technical documentation is frequently out of date, and documentation and mapping capabilities are lacking.
  • The documentation needs to be improved, and some advanced configuration options require research and experimentation.
  • Microsoft's licensing scheme is too complex for the average user, and Azure SQL syntax is too different from traditional SQL.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
Moving to Azure was and still is an organizational strategy and not simply changing vendors. Our product roadmap revolved around Azure as we are in the business of humanitarian relief and Azure and Microsoft play an important part in quickly and efficiently serving all of the world. Migration and investment in Azure should be considered as an overall strategy of an organization and communicated companywide.
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Usability
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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Microsoft
As Microsoft Azure is [doing a] really good with PaaS. The need of a market is to have [a] combo of PaaS and IaaS. While AWS is making [an] exceptionally well blend of both of them, Azure needs to work more on DevOps and Automation stuff. Apart from that, I would recommend Azure as a great platform for cloud services as scale.
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Reliability and Availability
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
It has proven to be unreliable in our production environment and services become unavailable without proper notification to system administrators
Read full review
Support Rating
Amazon AWS
Amazon consistently provides comprehensive and easy-to-parse documentation of all AWS features and services. Most development team members find what they need with a quick internet search of the AWS documentation available online. If you need advanced support, though, you might need to engage an AWS engineer, and that could be an unexpected (or unwelcome) expense.
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Microsoft
We were running Windows Server and Active Directory, so [Microsoft] Azure was a seamless transition. We ran into a few, if any support issues, however, the availability of Microsoft Azure's support team was more than willing and able to guide us through the process. They even proposed solutions to issues we had not even thought of!
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Implementation Rating
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
As I have mentioned before the issue with my Oracle Mismatch Version issues that have put a delay on moving one of my platforms will justify my 7 rating.
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Alternatives Considered
Amazon AWS
AWS Lambda is good for short running functions, and ideally in response to events within AWS. Google App Engine is a more robust environment which can have complex code running for long periods of time, and across more than one instance of hardware. Google App Engine allows for both front-end and back-end infrastructure, while AWS Lambda is only for small back-end functions
Read full review
Microsoft
As I continue to evaluate the "big three" cloud providers for our clients, I make the following distinctions, though this gap continues to close. AWS is more granular, and inherently powerful in the configuration options compared to [Microsoft] Azure. It is a "developer" platform for cloud. However, Azure PowerShell is helping close this gap. Google Cloud is the leading containerization platform, largely thanks to it building kubernetes from the ground up. Azure containerization is getting better at having the same storage/deployment options.
Read full review
Return on Investment
Amazon AWS
  • Positive - Only paying for when code is run, unlike virtual machines where you pay always regardless of processing power usage.
  • Positive - Scalability and accommodating larger amounts of demand is much cheaper. Instead of scaling up virtual machines and increasing the prices you pay for that, you are just increasing the number of times your lambda function is run.
  • Negative - Debugging/troubleshooting, and developing for lambda functions take a bit more time to get used to, and migrating code from virtual machines and normal processes to Lambda functions can take a bit of time.
Read full review
Microsoft
  • For about 2 years we didn't have to do anything with our production VMs, the system ran without a hitch, which meant our engineers could focus on features rather than infrastructure.
  • DNS management was very easy in Azure, which made it easy to upgrade our cluster with zero downtime.
  • Azure Web UI was easy to work with and navigate, which meant our senior engineers and DevOps team could work with Azure without formal training.
Read full review
ScreenShots