AWS vs AWS Lambda: Pricing Comparison 2026
Side-by-side pricing comparison of AWS and AWS Lambda. See all plans, features, and costs at a glance.
Bottom line: AWS Lambda starts at $2.1e-9/mo, making it $2020/mo cheaper than AWS ($2020/mo). Neither offers a free plan.
Last updated: June 15, 2026
AWS vs AWS Lambda: Quick Pricing Facts
| Feature | AWS | AWS Lambda |
|---|---|---|
| Starting Price | $2020/mo | $2.1e-9/mo |
| Number of Plans | 4 | 50 |
| Free Tier | No | No |
| Pricing Model | usage-based | usage-based |
| Annual Discount | N/A | N/A |
AWS Lambda is the more affordable option, starting at $2.1e-9/mo compared to AWS' $2020/mo. Both are Hosting & Infra tools with 54 combined pricing plans and 0 features compared.
Review the detailed tier-by-tier comparison above to see exactly which features are included at each price point and find the best fit for your Hosting & Infra needs.
| Pricing Plans |  AWS Try free |  AWS Lambda Try free |
|---|---|---|
| Tier 1 | How does AWS pricing work? Custom pricing | x86 Price Custom pricing |
| Tier 2 | How do you pay for AWS? Custom pricing | First 6 Billion GB-seconds / month $0/monthCheapest |
| Tier 3 | Is AWS Private Pricing right for you? Custom pricing | Next 9 Billion GB-seconds / month $0/monthCheapest |
| Tier 4 | Pricing for AWS products $2020/month | Over 15 Billion GB-seconds / month $0/monthCheapest |
| Tier 5 | - | Arm Price Custom pricing |
| Tier 6 | - | First 7.5 Billion GB-seconds / month $0/monthCheapest |
| Tier 7 | - | Next 11.25 Billion GB-seconds / month $0/monthCheapest |
| Tier 8 | - | Over 18.75 Billion GB-seconds / month $0/monthCheapest |
| Tier 9 | - | 128 $0/monthCheapest |
| Tier 10 | - | 512 $0/monthCheapest |
| Tier 11 | - | 1024 $0/monthCheapest |
| Tier 12 | - | 1536 $0/monthCheapest |
| Tier 13 | - | 2048 $0/monthCheapest |
| Tier 14 | - | 3072 $0/monthCheapest |
| Tier 15 | - | 4096 $0/monthCheapest |
| Tier 16 | - | 5120 $0/monthCheapest |
| Tier 17 | - | 6144 $0/monthCheapest |
| Tier 18 | - | 7168 $0/monthCheapest |
| Tier 19 | - | 8192 $0/monthCheapest |
| Tier 20 | - | 9216 $0/monthCheapest |
| Tier 21 | - | 10240 $0/monthCheapest |
| Tier 22 | - | Durable Operations Custom pricing |
| Tier 23 | - | Operations such as Steps, Waits, and Callbacks $8/monthCheapest |
| Tier 24 | - | Storage Custom pricing |
| Tier 25 | - | Data Written $0/monthCheapest |
| Tier 26 | - | Data Retained $0/monthCheapest |
| Tier 27 | - | Total compute (seconds) $1000000/monthCheapest |
| Tier 28 | - | Total compute (GB-s) $32000000/monthCheapest |
| Tier 29 | - | Billable compute $32000000/monthCheapest |
| Tier 30 | - | Compute cost $31600000/monthCheapest |
| Tier 31 | - | Total requests Custom pricing |
| Tier 32 | - | Billable requests $2000000/monthCheapest |
| Tier 33 | - | Request cost $1/monthCheapest |
| Tier 34 | - | Operations $1/monthCheapest |
| Tier 35 | - | Operations cost $4/monthCheapest |
| Tier 36 | - | Data written cost $104/monthCheapest |
| Tier 37 | - | Storage (running incl. 7 day wait) $104/monthCheapest |
| Tier 38 | - | Storage (retained 14 days) $104/monthCheapest |
| Tier 39 | - | Data Retained cost $24/monthCheapest |
| Tier 40 | - | Total charges $421/monthCheapest |
| Tier 41 | - | Tenant isolated enviroments (x86) $0/monthCheapest |
| Tier 42 | - | Tenant isolated enviroments (ARM) $0/monthCheapest |
| Tier 43 | - | Ephemeral Storage $0/monthCheapest |
| Tier 44 | - | Cache $0/monthCheapest |
| Tier 45 | - | Restore $0/monthCheapest |
| Tier 46 | - | Processed Bytes $0/monthCheapest |
| Tier 47 | - | SQS $0/monthCheapest |
| Tier 48 | - | MSK or Self-Managed Kafka $0/monthCheapest |
| Tier 49 | - | Requests Custom pricing |
| Tier 50 | - | Duration $0/monthCheapest |
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Which Should You Choose?
Choose AWS if:
- •You need the full breadth of AWS services - EC2 VMs, RDS databases, EKS, S3, and 200+ more
- •Your architecture requires persistent compute with fine-grained resource control
- •You need stateful, long-running workloads that do not fit a serverless model
Choose AWS Lambda if:
- •You need event-driven serverless compute that scales to zero and bills per execution
- •Lambda eliminates server management for functions triggered by API calls, S3 events, or queues
- •Your workload is intermittent or bursty and you want to pay only for actual execution time
AWS is the platform; Lambda is one service within it. Lambda runs on top of AWS infrastructure - you can use Lambda alongside EC2, RDS, and S3 on the same AWS account. The comparison is between full IaaS control (EC2 and managed services) versus serverless functions (Lambda). Most AWS architectures use both: Lambda for event-driven functions, EC2 or Fargate for persistent services. Choosing only Lambda means committing to a serverless-first architecture.
Frequently Asked Questions: AWS vs AWS Lambda
Which is cheaper, AWS or AWS Lambda?
How many pricing plans does AWS have vs AWS Lambda?
Does AWS or AWS Lambda offer custom enterprise pricing?
How do AWS and AWS Lambda compare for Hosting & Infra?
Sources
- AWS Official Pricing- Vendor pricing page
- AWS Lambda Official Pricing- Vendor pricing page
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