Head-to-head, indicative as of Oct 2026. Prices change — always confirm on the vendor page.
Quick read: pick AWS Lambda if your workload is event-driven pipelines inside the aws ecosystem and its pricing model fits your traffic shape; pick AWS Lightsail if you need simple sites that still want the aws backbone. For anything latency-sensitive at the edge, cold start row is the tiebreaker.
| AWS Lambda | AWS Lightsail | |
|---|---|---|
| Type | Function-as-a-Service | Simplified VPS |
| Free tier | 1M requests/month (always free) | 3 months free on first instances |
| Paid pricing (indicative) | ~$0.20 per million requests + GB-seconds compute | Flat from ~$5/mo (1GB) |
| Egress | ~$0.09/GB (billed) | 1-5TB included by plan |
| Cold start | ~100ms-1s (varies by runtime/VPC) | N/A (always-on) |
| Regions | ~30+ regions | Major AWS regions |
| Best for | Event-driven pipelines inside the AWS ecosystem | Simple sites that still want the AWS backbone |
Try AWS Lambda Try AWS Lightsail
NinjaOps publishes free engineering guides. Some outbound links are affiliate links: they cost you nothing and support the site.
Last reviewed 2026-10-02 · NinjaOps SEO grid · DevOps blog