Overview

AWS Lambda

Stacks24.4K

Followers18.8K

Votes432

Serverless

Stacks1.3K

Followers1.2K

Votes28

GitHub Stars46.9K

Forks5.7K

Twilio Functions

Stacks18

Followers31

Votes0

AWS Lambda vs Serverless vs Twilio Functions: What are the differences?

Introduction:

AWS Lambda, Serverless, and Twilio Functions are all serverless computing services that allow developers to run code without provisioning or managing servers. However, there are key differences between them that can influence which service is best for your specific use case.

Programming Language Support: AWS Lambda supports multiple programming languages such as Node.js, Python, Java, and C#, while Serverless framework supports Node.js and Python. Twilio Functions only support Node.js, limiting the choice of developers who prefer other languages. This difference in language support can impact the flexibility and ease of development for different teams.
Integrations: AWS Lambda has extensive integrations with various AWS services such as S3, DynamoDB, and API Gateway, providing a wide range of options for building serverless applications within the AWS ecosystem. Serverless also supports integrations with other cloud providers and services like Azure and Google Cloud. Twilio Functions are specifically designed for building communications apps and offer integrations with the Twilio platform, making it a specialized choice for those use cases.
Pricing Model: AWS Lambda pricing is based on the number of requests and the duration of code execution, with a free tier available. Serverless framework, on the other hand, is open source but may incur costs for managed services and resources used in deployments. Twilio Functions are priced based on the number of function invocations, with a free tier available, but additional costs may apply for usage of Twilio services. Understanding the pricing model of each service is essential for determining the cost-effectiveness of using them for your project.
Resource Limits: AWS Lambda has default resource limits such as memory allocation and execution time, which can be adjusted based on requirements. Serverless has similar resource limits but may vary depending on the cloud provider used. Twilio Functions also have resource limits for memory and execution time but are optimized for communications use cases, allowing for faster response times in messaging and voice applications.
Developer Tooling: AWS Lambda provides a rich set of developer tools, including AWS SDKs, CloudWatch monitoring, and X-Ray tracing, for building, testing, and monitoring serverless applications. Serverless framework offers a command-line interface (CLI) and plugins for deployment automation and management of serverless resources. Twilio Functions come with built-in tools for testing and debugging communication functions, with a focus on facilitating the development of messaging and voice applications.
Community and Support: AWS Lambda benefits from being part of the broader AWS ecosystem, with extensive documentation, forums, and community support available for developers. Serverless community also offers active support through forums, GitHub repositories, and online resources. Twilio has a dedicated developer community and support team specifically for communication use cases, providing specialized assistance for building voice and messaging applications.

In Summary, AWS Lambda, Serverless, and Twilio Functions offer different strengths in terms of programming language support, integrations, pricing model, resource limits, developer tooling, and community support, catering to diverse needs in serverless application development.

Advice on AWS Lambda, Serverless, Twilio Functions

Tim

CTO at Checkly Inc.

Sep 18, 2019

Needs adviceon

Heroku

AWS Lambda

When adding a new feature to Checkly rearchitecting some older piece, I tend to pick Heroku for rolling it out. But not always, because sometimes I pick AWS Lambda . The short story:

Developer Experience trumps everything.
AWS Lambda is cheap. Up to a limit though. This impact not only your wallet.
If you need geographic spread, AWS is lonely at the top.

The setup

Recently, I was doing a brainstorm at a startup here in Berlin on the future of their infrastructure. They were ready to move on from their initial, almost 100% Ec2 + Chef based setup. Everything was on the table. But we crossed out a lot quite quickly:

Pure, uncut, self hosted Kubernetes — way too much complexity
Managed Kubernetes in various flavors — still too much complexity
Zeit — Maybe, but no Docker support
Elastic Beanstalk — Maybe, bit old but does the job
Heroku
Lambda

It became clear a mix of PaaS and FaaS was the way to go. What a surprise! That is exactly what I use for Checkly! But when do you pick which model?

I chopped that question up into the following categories:

Developer Experience / DX 🤓
Ops Experience / OX 🐂 (?)
Cost 💵
Lock in 🔐

Read the full post linked below for all details

357k views357k

Comments

Mark

Nov 2, 2020

Needs adviceon

Microsoft Azure

Need advice on what platform, systems and tools to use.

Evaluating whether to start a new digital business for which we will need to build a website that handles all traffic. Website only right now. May add smartphone apps later. No desktop app will ever be added. Website to serve various countries and languages. B2B and B2C type customers. Need to handle heavy traffic, be low cost, and scale well.

We are open to either build it on AWS or on Microsoft Azure.

Apologies if I'm leaving out some info. My first post. :) Thanks in advance!

133k views133k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

AWS Lambda	Serverless	Twilio Functions
AWS Lambda is a compute service that runs your code in response to events and automatically manages the underlying compute resources for you. You can use AWS Lambda to extend other AWS services with custom logic, or create your own back-end services that operate at AWS scale, performance, and security.	Build applications comprised of microservices that run in response to events, auto-scale for you, and only charge you when they run. This lowers the total cost of maintaining your apps, enabling you to build more logic, faster. The Framework uses new event-driven compute services, like AWS Lambda, Google CloudFunctions, and more.	Developers provide Twilio with Node.js code for handling their communication events, such as an incoming phone call, and Twilio executes this code on their behalf, ensuring a seamless communications experience.
Extend other AWS services with custom logic;Build custom back-end services;Completely Automated Administration;Built-in Fault Tolerance;Automatic Scaling;Integrated Security Model;Bring Your Own Code;Pay Per Use;Flexible Resource Model	-	No servers to manage;Lower latency;Complete runtime environment
Statistics
GitHub Stars -	GitHub Stars 46.9K	GitHub Stars -
GitHub Forks -	GitHub Forks 5.7K	GitHub Forks -
Stacks 24.4K	Stacks 1.3K	Stacks 18
Followers 18.8K	Followers 1.2K	Followers 31
Votes 432	Votes 28	Votes 0
Pros & Cons
Pros 129 No infrastructure 83 Cheap 70 Quick 59 Stateless 47 No deploy, no server, great sleep Cons 7 Cant execute ruby or go 3 Compute time limited 1 Can't execute PHP w/o significant effort	Pros 14 API integration 7 Supports cloud functions for Google, Azure, and IBM 3 Lower cost 1 3. Simplified Management for developers to focus on cod 1 5. Built-in Redundancy and Availability:	No community feedback yet
Integrations
No integrations available	Azure Functions Amazon API Gateway	Twilio

What are some alternatives to AWS Lambda, Serverless, Twilio Functions?

Azure Functions

Azure Functions is an event driven, compute-on-demand experience that extends the existing Azure application platform with capabilities to implement code triggered by events occurring in virtually any Azure or 3rd party service as well as on-premises systems.

Google Cloud Run

A managed compute platform that enables you to run stateless containers that are invocable via HTTP requests. It's serverless by abstracting away all infrastructure management.

Google Cloud Functions

Construct applications from bite-sized business logic billed to the nearest 100 milliseconds, only while your code is running

Knative

Knative provides a set of middleware components that are essential to build modern, source-centric, and container-based applications that can run anywhere: on premises, in the cloud, or even in a third-party data center

OpenFaaS

Serverless Functions Made Simple for Docker and Kubernetes

Nuclio

nuclio is portable across IoT devices, laptops, on-premises datacenters and cloud deployments, eliminating cloud lock-ins and enabling hybrid solutions.

Apache OpenWhisk

OpenWhisk is an open source serverless platform. It is enterprise grade and accessible to all developers thanks to its superior programming model and tooling. It powers IBM Cloud Functions, Adobe I/O Runtime, Naver, Nimbella among others.

Cloud Functions for Firebase

Cloud Functions for Firebase lets you create functions that are triggered by Firebase products, such as changes to data in the Realtime Database, uploads to Cloud Storage, new user sign ups via Authentication, and conversion events in Analytics.

AWS Batch

It enables developers, scientists, and engineers to easily and efficiently run hundreds of thousands of batch computing jobs on AWS. It dynamically provisions the optimal quantity and type of compute resources (e.g., CPU or memory optimized instances) based on the volume and specific resource requirements of the batch jobs submitted.

Fission

Write short-lived functions in any language, and map them to HTTP requests (or other event triggers). Deploy functions instantly with one command. There are no containers to build, and no Docker registries to manage.