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AWS Lambda

AWS Lambda

Overview

What is AWS Lambda?

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…

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Recent Reviews

AWS Lambda for developers

9 out of 10
May 12, 2021
AWS Lambda serves various purpose accross teams
1. We mainly use AWS Lambda when we have very short time to productionise code and have …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

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Pricing

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128 MB

$0.0000000021

Cloud
Per 1 ms

1024 MB

$0.0000000167

Cloud
Per 1 ms

10240 MB

$0.0000001667

Cloud
Per 1 ms

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Product Demos

AWS Lambda | What is AWS Lambda | AWS Lambda Tutorial for Beginners | Intellipaat

YouTube
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Product Details

What is AWS Lambda?

AWS Lambda is a serverless computing platform that lets developers 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 care of requirements to run and scale code with high availability. Users pay only for the compute time they consume—there is no charge when their code is not running.

Developers uploading to Lambda don’t have to deal with their code’s environment. It’s a “serverless” service which lets outside code or events invoke functions. Lambda doesn’t store data, but it allows access to other services which do. Users can set up their code to automatically trigger from other AWS services or call it directly from any web or mobile app.

AWS Lambda Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

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.

Reviewers rate Usability highest, with a score of 9.

The most common users of AWS Lambda are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(353)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-4 of 4)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
November 17, 2019

Going Serverless Without Being Rudderless: AWS Lambda

BP
Benjamin Plotkin
Technical Project Manager
California State University, Northridge (Education Management, 1001-5000 employees)
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
Our university department is responsible for several web applications on campus that support student success, including providing online services for students directly, as well as supporting workflows and activities of other departments and divisions. As we move more and more of our applications into the AWS cloud, we have found Lambda to be a great way to simplify some of our web services and "housekeeping" processes; the fact that we're only charged for Lambda function calls, and not for the infrastructure which supports Lambda, helps us save on hosting costs, as well!
Pros and Cons
  • AWS Lambda is a welcoming platform, supporting several languages, including Java, Go, PowerShell, Node.js, C#, Python, and Ruby. And if you need to deploy a Lambda function in another language, AWS offers a Runtime API for integration.
  • We really appreciate how AWS Lambda is always-on for our functions, with only a brief "cold-start" waiting period the first time a function is called after being dormant.
  • In addition to only generating costs when it's actually being used, AWS Lambda really puts the "serverless" in serverless architecture, offering turnkey scaleability and high availability for our code with zero effort on our part.
  • 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.
Likelihood to Recommend
AWS Lambda is a great way to deploy smaller-scale data synchronization jobs and other "housekeeping" routines that don't require preservation of state. We use it to build API gateway tools used by our larger applications (many of which are hosted on AWS EC2 instances) and it's a perfect fit.

If you have complicated workflows that run a long time, or require state to be saved between function calls, AWS Lambda is probably not the right choice for a serverless solution.
AWS Lambda Feature Ratings
Function as a Service (FaaS)
N/A
N/A
Access Control and Security
N/A
N/A
Reporting & Analytics
N/A
N/A
Return on Investment
  • AWS Lambda has allowed us to decommission several legacy API gateway application servers as we moved our synchronization processes into the cloud, reducing our management time and equipment spend.
  • Using AWS Lambda instead of a dedicated EC2 instance has helped us save hundreds of cloud hosting dollars every month.
  • The flexibility of AWS Lambda's wide range of supported programming languages has enabled our entire development team to take advantage of serverless infrastructure without the need to invest in learning a platform-specific language, saving time and increasing productivity.
Support Rating
8
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.
Other Software Used
August 14, 2019

Functions as a service

Verified User
Administrator in Engineering
Biotechnology Company, 51-200 employees
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
We use AWS Lambda to efficiently auto scale our NodeJS-based infrastructure without the overhead of needing to manage virtual machines or worry about capacity planning. Additionally, we don’t need to manage security patches for the OS because there is no OS to worry about!
Pros and Cons
  • Auto-scaling.
  • Scale to zero.
  • Quick function startup.
  • Less vendor lock-in.
  • Better integration with community tools like OpenFaaS.
  • Improved cold start times.
Likelihood to Recommend
AWS Lambda is great for distributed systems in which scaling of independent components is critical and you don’t want to manage the overhead of needing to maintain a fleet of virtual machines.
AWS Lambda Feature Ratings
Function as a Service (FaaS)
N/A
N/A
Access Control and Security
N/A
N/A
Reporting & Analytics
N/A
N/A
Return on Investment
  • Reduced costs.
  • Lower security surface area.
  • Quick development feedback loop.
Usability
8
Good user experience but it’s limited to AWS propriety development flow and better integration with community tools like OpenFaaS would improve the development story.
Support Rating
10
We have always had quick and helpful responses to customer support requests.
May 23, 2019

Most reliable serverless architecture implementation

Verified User
Engineer in Engineering
Computer Software Company, 501-1000 employees
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
We are already using other AWS services like EC2, RDS, S3, etc. and they are super reliable and easy to maintain. We use AWS Lambda to host our serverless function which is responsible for authentication. We have also started moving our microservices from EC2 to Lambda.
Pros and Cons
  • No need to maintain architecture.
  • Easier operational management with AWS console.
  • Scaling benefits of FaaS beyond costs. You pay only for what you used.
  • Vendor lock-in, dependency on AWS ecosystem.
  • It's a bit difficult to get started. AWS needs to provide more getting started examples.
  • UI is a bit dull and messy. They should make it cleaner.
Likelihood to Recommend
Product engineers can innovate rapidly as serverless architecture has alleviated the problems of system engineering. Thus, you spend less time on operational issues and it makes devops life easier.
AWS Lambda Feature Ratings
Function as a Service (FaaS)
N/A
N/A
Access Control and Security
N/A
N/A
Reporting & Analytics
N/A
N/A
Return on Investment
  • It is cost-effective, easily scalable, and reliable.
Other Software Used
June 08, 2018

Simple server-less services!

Verified User
Engineer in Engineering
Health, Wellness and Fitness Company, 1-10 employees
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
We've used AWS Lambda to deploy several "serverless services". The ability to quickly deploy functions, with no architecture, across several languages, with interoperability between other AWS components (such as S3), at an extremely low cost is really cool. We use Lambda to automate simple processes as well as to run code in languages that aren't supported by our main stack.
Pros and Cons
  • Very reasonable prices with billing down to the 100ms
  • Super easy to deploy functions and set up triggers from other AWS services
  • Plenty of examples and code snippets (from Amazon and around the web)
  • Vendor lock-in: While a basic function or microservice might be platform independent, when you start to use AWS APIs and interact with other AWS services, your microservice now relies on the AWS ecosystem
  • A bit intimidating at first, however there are a lot of resources. Amazon could offer more templates and examples though
Likelihood to Recommend
When to use:
Easily deploys functions/microservices without a server. Deploy code in several different languages (For instance: Your main app is Node.js but you want to launch a Python microservice? Simple!). Automate small tasks between different AWS services.

When not to use:
When you don't really have a microservice and you actually need a server! Or when you're not going to rely on other AWS services to make up for the lack of a server.
AWS Lambda Feature Ratings
Function as a Service (FaaS)
N/A
N/A
Access Control and Security
N/A
N/A
Reporting & Analytics
N/A
N/A
Return on Investment
  • Really cost-effective way to automate tasks, run microservices, etc.
  • Saves a lot of time not having to worry about the environment, architecture, etc.
  • Allows us to use other programming languages than those supported by our server architecture
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