AWS Lambda vs Convex
A detailed comparison to help you choose between AWS Lambda and Convex.
Quick Verdict
4.1/5
AWS Lambda
0 reviews
4.0/5
Convex
0 reviews
AWS Lambda is rated higher (4.1 vs 4.0). AWS Lambda is the original FaaS service — run code without servers. Supports 15+ runtimes, 1M free requests/month, and integrates deeply with 200+ AWS services. Triggered by S3, DynamoDB, API Gateway, and more. Convex is a backend-as-a-service that provides a reactive database with real-time subscriptions, serverless functions, file storage, and authentication. TypeScript-first developer experience.
 AWS Lambda The original serverless functions service | Convex TypeScript-first backend platform with real-time sync and serverless functions | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 4.1 (0 reviews)✓ | 4.0 (0 reviews) |
| Pricing model | freemium (pay per request + GB-second; MicroVMs/Managed Instances metered differently) | freemium |
| Starting price | Free tier available | Free tier available |
| Best for | AWS developers building event-driven, variable-traffic workloads — webhooks, media processing, scheduled jobs, API backends — who want to stop managing servers entirely | TypeScript teams building real-time, collaborative or AI-agent applications who want to replace an assembled backend stack with one reactive platform and value developer velocity over infrastructure control. |
| Specifications (entry plan) | ||
| CPU cores | — | — |
| RAM | — | — |
| Storage | — | 1 GB |
| Bandwidth | — | — |
| SLA uptime | 99.95% | — |
| Data-center count | — | 3 |
| Features | ||
| IPv6 | ||
| DDoS protection | ✓ | |
| Automated backups | ✓ | |
| Snapshots | ||
| Managed option | ||
| Bare metal | ||
| GPU available | ||
| S3-compatible | ||
| Hourly billing | ✓ | |
| Free tier | ||
| Data-center locations | ||
| Regions | All 39 AWS regions / 124 AZs | US East (N. Virginia), EU West, Canada Central |
| Tags | ||
| Tags | free tierapi accessus datacentereu datacenterapac datacenter | free tierapi access |
| Visit AWS Lambda → | Visit Convex → | |
AWS Lambda
Pros
- + Zero idle cost with a free tier that covers small products: 1M requests and 400,000 GB-seconds monthly
- + Graviton pricing at $0.0000133334 per GB-second undercuts x86 by roughly 20%
- + Automatic multi-AZ scaling with a 99.95% per-region SLA and no capacity planning
- + Deep event integration across AWS services, with three form factors (Event/Web Functions, MicroVMs)
Cons
- - Per-request and GB-second pricing gets expensive against committed compute at steady high utilization
- - Cold starts — hundreds of milliseconds to seconds depending on runtime — with provisioned concurrency as an extra meter
- - 15-minute execution limit and payload caps make it wrong for long-running batch work
- - AWS-specific event plumbing creates real lock-in; distributed event chains are hard to debug
Convex
Pros
- + Replaces a whole backend stack — database, functions, sync, search, storage and auth — with end-to-end TypeScript type safety and ACID transactions
- + Generous economics for reactive apps: query/mutation compute free on serverless, plus a real free plan and pay-as-you-go Starter tier
- + All unit rates and per-tier limits published, including an honest 1.3x regional multiplier for EU and Canada
- + Core backend open-sourced (March 2024) with self-hosting option — genuine lock-in relief uncommon in this category
- + Well-funded ($110.5M through a $57M Series B in 2026), SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA compliant, with named production customers at real scale
Cons
- - Document model is not SQL — poor fit for Postgres estates, analyst workflows and BI tooling
- - Usage-based metering can surprise chatty clients; no hard spend caps on paid tiers
- - Support SLAs are a paid feature: 30-minute P1 response only in $1,000–$2,000/month premier tiers
- - TypeScript-first to the point of exclusion — a non-starter for non-TS teams
- - Self-hosting the open-source backend is an operational project most teams will only use as an escape hatch
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