Cloud Cost Comparison
Serverless Cost Comparison 2025: AWS Lambda vs Azure Functions vs GCP Cloud Run vs OCI Functions
Serverless Pricing Model Explained
Serverless functions use two-dimensional pricing: per request (API calls) and per compute time (GB-seconds = memory × execution duration). Understanding both dimensions is essential to estimating real costs.
Free Tier Comparison
| Provider | Service | Free Requests/Month | Free GB-Seconds/Month |
|---|---|---|---|
| AWS | Lambda | 1 million | 400,000 |
| Azure | Functions (Consumption) | 1 million | 400,000 |
| GCP | Cloud Functions | 2 million | 400,000 |
| OCI | Functions | 2 million | 400,000 |
Pricing Beyond Free Tier
| Provider | Per Million Requests | Per GB-Second |
|---|---|---|
| AWS Lambda | $0.20 | $0.0000166667 |
| Azure Functions | $0.20 | $0.0000160000 |
| GCP Cloud Functions | $0.40 | $0.0000025000 |
| OCI Functions | $0.00 (free!) | $0.0000142000 |
Real-World Cost: 100M Requests, 200ms, 512MB
Monthly calculation: 100M requests × 0.2s × 0.5GB = 10M GB-seconds
| Provider | Request Cost | Compute Cost | Total/Month |
|---|---|---|---|
| AWS Lambda | $19.80 | $166.50 | $186.30 |
| Azure Functions | $19.80 | $159.86 | $179.66 |
| GCP Cloud Functions | $39.20 | $24.98 | $64.18 |
| OCI Functions | $0.00 | $142.00 | $142.00 |
GCP Cloud Functions wins dramatically at high request volumes with short durations, due to their extremely low compute price ($0.0000025/GB-sec vs Lambda's $0.0000167). For CPU-intensive, longer-running functions, Lambda or OCI are more competitive.
Serverless Containers
| Service | Key Advantage | Price Model |
|---|---|---|
| AWS Fargate | ECS/EKS integration | $0.04048/vCPU-hr + $0.004445/GB-hr |
| Azure Container Apps | Scale to zero | Per vCPU-second |
| GCP Cloud Run | Per 100ms billing, generous free tier | $0.000024/vCPU-sec |
| OCI Container Instances | OCI pricing advantage | $0.00215/vCPU-hr |
Choosing a Serverless Platform
- Event-driven, millions of short requests: GCP Cloud Functions (cheapest compute)
- AWS ecosystem integration: Lambda (S3, DynamoDB, API Gateway native)
- Azure-native integration: Azure Functions (Event Hubs, Service Bus, Cosmos DB)
- Cost-sensitive, Oracle ecosystem: OCI Functions
For purely cost-driven serverless decisions at scale, model your specific request count and duration. GCP often wins for high-volume short requests; OCI wins for longer-running workloads.
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