AWS EC2 vs Azure Functions
A detailed comparison to help you choose between AWS EC2 and Azure Functions.
Quick Verdict
3.9/5
AWS EC2
0 reviews
4.0/5
Azure Functions
0 reviews
Azure Functions is rated higher (4.0 vs 3.9). 124 Availability Zones in 39 geographic regions Azure Functions is Microsoft's serverless platform. 1M free executions/month. Durable Functions for long-running workflows. Best integration with .NET, Microsoft 365, and Azure services.
 AWS EC2 The original cloud — 750+ instance types | Azure Functions Microsoft serverless functions for .NET teams | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 3.9 (0 reviews) | 4.0 (0 reviews)✓ |
| Pricing model | usage-based (per-second On-Demand, Spot, Savings Plans; free tier credits for new accounts) | usage-based |
| Starting price | From $0.0042/mo | Free tier available✓ |
| Best for | Teams with AWS expertise needing the broadest instance selection, global regions, GPU/bare metal options, and commitment-based discounts for steady production workloads | Microsoft/.NET teams building event-driven processing, workflows (Durable Functions), and spiky APIs inside the Azure ecosystem |
| Specifications (entry plan) | ||
| CPU cores | — | — |
| RAM | 0.5 GB | — |
| Storage | — | — |
| Bandwidth | — | — |
| SLA uptime | 99.99% | — |
| Data-center count | — | — |
| €/GB RAM/mo | €0.01 | — |
| Features | ||
| IPv6 | ✓ | |
| DDoS protection | ||
| Automated backups | ||
| Snapshots | ||
| Managed option | ||
| Bare metal | ||
| GPU available | ||
| S3-compatible | ||
| Hourly billing | ✓ | |
| Free tier | ||
| Data-center locations | ||
| Regions | 39 AWS regions / 124 AZs plus Local Zones and Wavelength | — |
| Tags | ||
| Tags | free tierhourly billingipv6ddos protectionbackups includedmanaged optionbare metalgpu availables3 compatibleeu datacenterus datacenterapac datacenterapi accessterraform providerkubernetes support | free tierapi accessus datacentereu datacenterapac datacenter |
| Visit AWS EC2 → | Visit Azure Functions → | |
AWS EC2
Pros
- + Widest hardware catalog in the market — 1,000+ instance types including Arm, bare metal and GPU families
- + Per-second billing with real cost levers: Spot up to 90% off, Savings Plans up to 72% off
- + 99.99% region-level SLA across 124 AZs in 39 regions with explicit service credits
- + Mature ecosystem: AMIs, Marketplace, Terraform, Systems Manager, and deep service integration
Cons
- - Total cost is a system of meters — EBS, snapshots, elastic IPv4, data transfer and add-ons dwarf the instance price
- - Requires real AWS expertise: VPC design, security groups, IAM and patching are all self-managed
- - Single-instance SLA is only 99.5%; the 99.99% commitment requires multi-AZ architecture
- - Data transfer out is expensive enough to shape architecture decisions
Azure Functions
Pros
- + Permanent free grant of 1 million executions and 400,000 GB-s per month
- + Trigger/binding integrations cover most Azure and third-party services declaratively
- + Durable Functions for stateful orchestration — the strongest workflow story among serverless platforms
- + Hosting plan ladder (Consumption, Flex, Premium, Dedicated, Container Apps) covers most cost/performance points
- + 99.95% SLA with service credits scaling up to 100% below 95% uptime
Cons
- - Cold starts on Consumption hurt latency-sensitive HTTP workloads
- - Per-instance limits (1.5 GB RAM, 1 core) cap what single functions can do
- - Azure surface area: storage account, monitoring, identity, and networking costs stack up
- - Bindings and Durable Functions abstractions lock integration logic to Azure
- - Premium costs real money whether or not traffic flows (EP1 ~$146/month US rates)
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