AWS Elastic Beanstalk vs AWS Lambda: What are the differences?

Introduction

In this article, we will discuss the key differences between AWS Elastic Beanstalk and AWS Lambda, two popular services offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) for deploying applications.

1. Lifecycle Management: AWS Elastic Beanstalk is designed to handle the complete lifecycle of applications. It provides capabilities for deploying, scaling, and managing applications, including automatic capacity provisioning, load balancing, and application health monitoring. On the other hand, AWS Lambda is a serverless compute service that allows you to run your code without thinking about servers. It focuses on executing individual functions in response to events, with automatic scaling and high availability built-in.

2. Deployment Model: Elastic Beanstalk uses a more traditional deployment model where the application is packaged and deployed on instances managed by Elastic Beanstalk. You have control over the underlying infrastructure, including the operating system and runtime environment. In contrast, Lambda is based on the serverless architecture model, where you simply upload your code and AWS takes care of the rest. You don't have to manage any servers or infrastructure.

3. Granularity of Execution: Elastic Beanstalk deploys and manages applications as a whole, meaning the entire application is deployed and scaled together. It is suitable for applications that need to be deployed as a complete unit. On the other hand, Lambda allows you to execute functions individually, which can be more granular and flexible. Each function can be independently triggered and scaled, allowing for more fine-grained control over application components.

4. Cost Model: Elastic Beanstalk pricing is based on the underlying infrastructure resources that your application utilizes, such as EC2 instances, load balancers, and outbound data transfer. You pay for the resources provisioned and used. In contrast, Lambda pricing is based on the number of requests and the duration of the function execution. You only pay for the actual compute time consumed by the functions, which can result in a more cost-efficient model for applications with sporadic usage patterns.

5. Flexibility: Elastic Beanstalk provides flexibility in terms of the operating system, runtime environment, and configuration choices. You can customize the underlying infrastructure and stack to meet specific requirements. Lambda, on the other hand, provides less flexibility in terms of customizing the runtime environment or underlying infrastructure as it abstracts away those details. It is focused on providing a simplified and managed environment for executing code.

6. Supported Use Cases: Elastic Beanstalk is well-suited for scenarios where you need control over the underlying infrastructure, want to deploy and manage complex applications, and require a high level of customization. It is often used for web application hosting or deploying multi-tiered applications. Lambda, on the other hand, is ideal for event-driven architectures, microservices, or on-demand execution of functions without worrying about server management.

In Summary, Elastic Beanstalk is a platform for deploying and managing applications, offering control over infrastructure and customization options, while Lambda is a serverless compute service that executes functions individually based on events, providing automatic scaling and abstraction from underlying infrastructure.