AWS Lambda

AWS Lambda lets you run code without provisioning or managing servers. You pay only for the compute time you consume.

With Lambda, you can run code for virtually any type of application or backend service - all with zero administration. Just upload your code and Lambda takes care of everything required to run and scale your code with high availability. You can set up your code to automatically trigger from other AWS services or call it directly from any web or mobile app.

Getting started with AWS Lambda (3:00)

Benefits

No servers to manage

AWS Lambda automatically runs your code without requiring you to provision or manage servers. Just write the code and upload it to Lambda.

Continuous scaling

AWS Lambda automatically scales your application by running code in response to each trigger. Your code runs in parallel and processes each trigger individually, scaling precisely with the size of the workload.

Subsecond metering

With AWS Lambda, you are charged for every 100ms your code executes and the number of times your code is triggered. You pay only for the compute time you consume.

Consistent performance

With AWS Lambda, you can optimize your code execution time by choosing the right memory size for your function. You can also enable Provisioned Concurrency to keep your functions initialized and hyper-ready to respond within double digit milliseconds.

How it works

Use cases

What can you build with AWS Lambda? Learn more about the use cases below:

Data processing

You can use AWS Lambda to execute code in response to triggers such as changes in data, shifts in system state, or actions by users. Lambda can be directly triggered by AWS services such as S3, DynamoDB, Kinesis, SNS, and CloudWatch, can connect to existing EFS file systems, or it can be orchestrated into workflows by AWS Step Functions. This allows you to build a variety of real-time serverless data processing systems.

Real-time file processing

You can use Amazon S3 to trigger AWS Lambda to process data immediately after an upload. You can also connect to an existing Amazon EFS file system directly, which enables massively parallel shared access for large scale file processing. For example, you can use Lambda to thumbnail images, transcode videos, index files, process logs, validate content, and aggregate and filter data in real-time.

Reference Architecture: Sample Code

The Seattle Times uses AWS Lambda to resize images for viewing on different devices such as desktop computers, tablets, and smartphones. Read the case study »

Real-time stream processing

You can use AWS Lambda and Amazon Kinesis to process real-time streaming data for application activity tracking, transaction order processing, click stream analysis, data cleansing, metrics generation, log filtering, indexing, social media analysis, and IoT device data telemetry and metering.

Reference Architecture: Sample code

Localytics processes billions of data points in real-time, and uses Lambda to process historical and live data stored in S3 or streamed from Kinesis. Read the case study »

Machine learning

You can use AWS Lambda to preprocess data before feeding it to your machine learning model. With Lambda access to EFS, you can also serve your model for prediction at scale without having to provision or manage any infrastructure.

"At Aible we focus on delivering the most powerful AI technologies at the lowest possible operating cost. As such, we use AWS Lambda and Serverless for machine learning training and predictions. With Serverless, we can run a wide variety of machine learning workloads more cost effectively while benefiting from burst compute resources needed for rapid iteration and scaling to create AI for optimal business impact."

Rod Butters, CTO – Aible

Backends

You can build serverless backends using AWS Lambda to handle web, mobile, Internet of Things (IoT), and 3rd party API requests. Take advantage of Lambda’s consistent performance controls, such as multiple memory configurations and Provisioned Concurrency, for building latency-sensitive applications at any scale.

Web applications

By combining AWS Lambda with other AWS services, developers can build powerful web applications that automatically scale up and down and run in a highly available configuration across multiple data centers – with zero administrative effort required for scalability, back-ups or multi-data center redundancy.

Reference Architecture: Sample code

IoT backends

You can build serverless backends using AWS Lambda to handle web, mobile, Internet of Things (IoT), and 3rd party API requests.

Reference Architecture: Sample code

Mobile backends

AWS Lambda makes it easy to create rich, personalized app experiences. You can build backends using AWS Lambda and Amazon API Gateway to authenticate and process API requests. Use AWS Amplify to easily integrate your backend with your iOS, Android, Web, and React Native frontends.

Reference Architecture: Sample code

Bustle runs a serverless backend for its Bustle iOS app and websites using AWS Lambda and Amazon API Gateway. Serverless architectures allow Bustle to never have to deal with infrastructure management, so every engineer can focus on building out new features and innovating. Read the case study »

Case studies

The Coca-Cola Company, an American multinational beverage corporation, used AWS Lambda and AWS Step Functions to build a cost-effective serverless solution.

Read the blog »

iRobot, a leading global consumer robot company, is building the next generation of connected devices for the smart home using a serverless architecture.