AWS Lambda
Runs a function in response to an event without any server to provision. Billed per request and per GB-second of execution, scaling to zero when idle.
Limits
Function timeout is capped at 900 seconds (15 minutes) and cannot be increased
Memory is configurable from 128 MB to 10,240 MB in 1 MB increments, and CPU is allocated in proportion — at 1,769 MB a function has the equivalent of one vCPU
The /tmp directory provides between 512 MB and 10,240 MB of ephemeral storage, configurable in 1 MB increments
Asynchronous invocation payloads are limited to 1 MB, while synchronous request and response payloads are 6 MB each
Default concurrent executions per Region is 1,000, and each function scales by 1,000 execution environments every 10 seconds
Pricing model
Per request plus GB-seconds of execution time, where GB-seconds are duration multiplied by configured memory. Raising memory therefore raises the per-millisecond rate but often shortens duration, so cost is not monotonic in memory.
Cross-provider equivalents
- Google Cloud Run
How it differs: Cloud Run allows a request timeout up to 60 minutes (3,600 seconds) against Lambda's hard 15-minute (900 second) ceiling, so a long-running transcode or batch job that must be split into steps on Lambda often runs unchanged on Cloud Run.