All terms
Glossary
Serverless
An operating model where the provider handles provisioning and scaling and only actual usage is billed.
Servers do not disappear, they disappear from your responsibility. There is no instance to maintain, but there are limits on runtime, memory and concurrency.
Economically it pays off with uneven load: what does not run at night costs nothing. With steady round the clock load, reserved capacity is usually cheaper.
How you notice it
- Load is uneven with long quiet periods.
- There are tasks triggered by events.
- Nobody wants to maintain servers.
Frequently asked
When is serverless more expensive than an instance?
Under steady round the clock load. Above roughly 40 to 50 per cent constant utilization a reserved instance wins. Serverless pays off on variability, not on continuous operation.