Serverless: slower and more expensive (einaregilsson.com)

Article summary

The author of CardGames.io experimented with switching their API from Elastic Beanstalk to a serverless setup using the Serverless framework on AWS, but found it to be 15% slower and 8 times more expensive. The main cost driver was API Gateway, which charged $3.50 per million requests. The author concluded that serverless was not a good fit for their use case, which involves a high volume of requests. They decided to stick with Elastic Beanstalk.

Main themes

• serverless vs traditional hosting
• cost and performance comparison
• scalability and autoscaling
• infrastructure management
• cloud computing pricing models

What commenters say

• Serverless is not suitable for high-traffic APIs due to high costs and potential performance issues.
• The cost of serverless can be justified by the reduced need for infrastructure management and the ability to focus on product development.
• Using an Application Load Balancer instead of API Gateway could significantly reduce costs for serverless setups.
• The decision to use serverless or traditional hosting depends on the specific use case and requirements of the application.
• Serverless is particularly useful for new startups or applications with uncertain or variable traffic patterns.
• The industry should focus on developing more accessible and user-friendly serverless solutions that can compete with traditional hosting options.
• The comparison between serverless and traditional hosting is not always apples-to-apples, as it depends on the specific implementation and requirements of the application.
• Serverless can be a good choice for applications with low or sporadic traffic, but may not be suitable for high-traffic applications due to cost and performance concerns.