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Serverless vs Container Cost Calculator

Work out serverless vs container cost instantly with clear inputs, formula shown and shareable results.

About Serverless vs Container Cost Calculator

Serverless cost is GB-seconds — requests times duration times memory in gigabytes — plus a per-request charge, so it scales exactly with usage and costs nothing when idle. Containers cost the same whether busy or not. The crossover therefore depends on utilisation: spiky low-duty-cycle workloads favour serverless, sustained high-volume workloads favour containers.

Formula

Serverless cost

GB-seconds = requests x duration x memory GB; cost = GB-seconds x per-GB-second rate + requests / 1e6 x per-million rate

Worked example

With the default values below, Serverless vs Container Cost Calculator returns Serverless monthly cost of $68.00. Change any input above and every figure here is recalculated in your browser.

Inputs used

Requests per monthminimum 0 millions
40 millions
Average execution durationminimum 1 ms
180 ms
Memory allocatedaccepts 64–10,240 MB
512 MB
Monthly cost of the equivalent container fleetminimum 0
620

Results

Serverless monthly cost
$68.00
GB-seconds consumed
3,600,000
Cheaper option
Serverless is cheaper at this volume
Break-even request volume
364.7 millions

Step by step

  1. 1Values used
  2. 2Serverless cost
  3. 3Serverless monthly cost= 68.00
  4. 4GB-seconds consumed= 3,600,000
  5. 5Cheaper option= Serverless is cheaper at this volume
  6. 6Break-even request volume= 364.7 millions

Assumptions and limits

  • The result is derived only from the 4 inputs listed above. Anything not among them is not part of the calculation.
  • In particular, this calculator does not take inflation, tax or compounding frequency into account.
  • Figures are rounded for display to 2 decimal places, so totals built from several rounded parts can differ slightly from the unrounded arithmetic.

How these calculators are built and tested is described on the Methodology page. If a figure looks wrong, please report it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does allocating more memory always cost more?

Not necessarily. More memory means proportionally more CPU, so a function may finish fast enough that GB-seconds fall. Always measure across memory settings.

What costs are missing from this comparison?

Cold-start latency, API gateway charges, and the operational cost of container orchestration. The last frequently outweighs the compute difference.

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