AWS Lambda vs Chalice

Overview

AWS Lambda

Stacks26.0K

Followers18.8K

Votes432

Chalice

Stacks46

Followers107

Votes0

AWS Lambda vs Chalice: What are the differences?

AWS Lambda and Chalice are both services provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS) for serverless computing. While they have similarities, there are several key differences between the two.

Pricing and Usage: One key difference between AWS Lambda and Chalice is the pricing model and usage. AWS Lambda charges by the number of requests, the duration of execution, and the memory allocated. Chalice, on the other hand, is a framework that allows developers to build serverless applications on AWS Lambda, and it does not have its own pricing model. The cost of using Chalice is based on the resources consumed by the underlying Lambda functions.
Deployment and Configuration: Another difference is the deployment and configuration process. With AWS Lambda, developers need to manually create and configure the Lambda functions, set up triggers, and manage the deployment process. Chalice simplifies this process by providing a command-line interface (CLI) to deploy and manage serverless applications. It automatically sets up the necessary resources and handles the deployment process.
Supported Languages: AWS Lambda supports a variety of programming languages, including Node.js, Python, Java, and C#. Chalice, on the other hand, is specifically designed for Python applications. It provides a Pythonic API for building serverless applications, making it easier for Python developers to work with.
Scaling and Performance: AWS Lambda automatically scales the execution environment based on the incoming requests, allowing applications to handle large workloads efficiently. Chalice leverages the scaling capabilities of AWS Lambda, so it benefits from the same scalability. However, Chalice also provides additional features, such as automatic HTTP session management and content negotiation, which can enhance the performance of serverless applications.
Development and Debugging: In terms of development and debugging, AWS Lambda provides tools and features that can help developers test and troubleshoot their functions. Chalice, as a framework, provides additional capabilities for local testing and debugging. It allows developers to run serverless applications locally, making it easier to identify and fix issues during the development process.
Flexibility and Customization: While AWS Lambda provides a wide range of features and options for building serverless applications, Chalice offers a higher level of abstraction and simplifies the development process. Chalice provides a set of predefined routes and handlers, making it easier to build RESTful APIs. However, this level of abstraction may limit the flexibility and customization options available to developers.

In summary, AWS Lambda is a serverless compute service provided by AWS, while Chalice is a Python framework for building serverless applications on AWS Lambda. The key differences between the two include pricing and usage models, deployment and configuration processes, supported languages, scaling and performance capabilities, development and debugging tools, and flexibility and customization options.

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CLI (Node.js)

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Advice on AWS Lambda, Chalice

Tim

CTO at Checkly Inc.

Sep 18, 2019

Needs adviceon

Heroku

AWS Lambda

When adding a new feature to Checkly rearchitecting some older piece, I tend to pick Heroku for rolling it out. But not always, because sometimes I pick AWS Lambda . The short story:

Developer Experience trumps everything.
AWS Lambda is cheap. Up to a limit though. This impact not only your wallet.
If you need geographic spread, AWS is lonely at the top.

The setup

Recently, I was doing a brainstorm at a startup here in Berlin on the future of their infrastructure. They were ready to move on from their initial, almost 100% Ec2 + Chef based setup. Everything was on the table. But we crossed out a lot quite quickly:

Pure, uncut, self hosted Kubernetes — way too much complexity
Managed Kubernetes in various flavors — still too much complexity
Zeit — Maybe, but no Docker support
Elastic Beanstalk — Maybe, bit old but does the job
Heroku
Lambda

It became clear a mix of PaaS and FaaS was the way to go. What a surprise! That is exactly what I use for Checkly! But when do you pick which model?

I chopped that question up into the following categories:

Developer Experience / DX 🤓
Ops Experience / OX 🐂 (?)
Cost 💵
Lock in 🔐

Read the full post linked below for all details

357k views357k

Comments

Mark

Nov 2, 2020

Needs adviceon

Microsoft Azure

Need advice on what platform, systems and tools to use.

Evaluating whether to start a new digital business for which we will need to build a website that handles all traffic. Website only right now. May add smartphone apps later. No desktop app will ever be added. Website to serve various countries and languages. B2B and B2C type customers. Need to handle heavy traffic, be low cost, and scale well.

We are open to either build it on AWS or on Microsoft Azure.

Apologies if I'm leaving out some info. My first post. :) Thanks in advance!

133k views133k

Comments

Cory

Mar 28, 2021

Decided

Netlfiy Functions uses AWS Lambda under the hood, but Netlify adds some nice sugar. The biggest advantage is the local development experience with netlify-cli. This allows you to run your functions locally with local configuration or pull configs from the Netlify dashboard. I built a health-check endpoint in about 2 minutes, and my send-email function in less than an hour.

28.2k views28.2k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

AWS Lambda	Chalice
AWS Lambda is a compute service that runs your code in response to events and automatically manages the underlying compute resources for you. You can use AWS Lambda to extend other AWS services with custom logic, or create your own back-end services that operate at AWS scale, performance, and security.	The python serverless microframework for AWS allows you to quickly create and deploy applications that use Amazon API Gateway and AWS Lambda.
Extend other AWS services with custom logic;Build custom back-end services;Completely Automated Administration;Built-in Fault Tolerance;Automatic Scaling;Integrated Security Model;Bring Your Own Code;Pay Per Use;Flexible Resource Model	-
Statistics
Stacks 26.0K	Stacks 46
Followers 18.8K	Followers 107
Votes 432	Votes 0
Pros & Cons
Pros 129 No infrastructure 83 Cheap 70 Quick 59 Stateless 47 No deploy, no server, great sleep Cons 7 Cant execute ruby or go 3 Compute time limited 1 Can't execute PHP w/o significant effort	No community feedback yet
Integrations
No integrations available	Amazon API Gateway

What are some alternatives to AWS Lambda, Chalice?

Azure Functions

Azure Functions is an event driven, compute-on-demand experience that extends the existing Azure application platform with capabilities to implement code triggered by events occurring in virtually any Azure or 3rd party service as well as on-premises systems.

Google Cloud Run

A managed compute platform that enables you to run stateless containers that are invocable via HTTP requests. It's serverless by abstracting away all infrastructure management.

Serverless

Build applications comprised of microservices that run in response to events, auto-scale for you, and only charge you when they run. This lowers the total cost of maintaining your apps, enabling you to build more logic, faster. The Framework uses new event-driven compute services, like AWS Lambda, Google CloudFunctions, and more.

Google Cloud Functions

Construct applications from bite-sized business logic billed to the nearest 100 milliseconds, only while your code is running

Knative

Knative provides a set of middleware components that are essential to build modern, source-centric, and container-based applications that can run anywhere: on premises, in the cloud, or even in a third-party data center

OpenFaaS

Serverless Functions Made Simple for Docker and Kubernetes

Nuclio

nuclio is portable across IoT devices, laptops, on-premises datacenters and cloud deployments, eliminating cloud lock-ins and enabling hybrid solutions.

Apache OpenWhisk

OpenWhisk is an open source serverless platform. It is enterprise grade and accessible to all developers thanks to its superior programming model and tooling. It powers IBM Cloud Functions, Adobe I/O Runtime, Naver, Nimbella among others.

Cloud Functions for Firebase

Cloud Functions for Firebase lets you create functions that are triggered by Firebase products, such as changes to data in the Realtime Database, uploads to Cloud Storage, new user sign ups via Authentication, and conversion events in Analytics.

AWS Batch

It enables developers, scientists, and engineers to easily and efficiently run hundreds of thousands of batch computing jobs on AWS. It dynamically provisions the optimal quantity and type of compute resources (e.g., CPU or memory optimized instances) based on the volume and specific resource requirements of the batch jobs submitted.

Related Comparisons

AWS Lambda vs Chalice: What are the differences?

AWS Lambda and Chalice are both services provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS) for serverless computing. While they have similarities, there are several key differences between the two.

Pricing and Usage: One key difference between AWS Lambda and Chalice is the pricing model and usage. AWS Lambda charges by the number of requests, the duration of execution, and the memory allocated. Chalice, on the other hand, is a framework that allows developers to build serverless applications on AWS Lambda, and it does not have its own pricing model. The cost of using Chalice is based on the resources consumed by the underlying Lambda functions.
Deployment and Configuration: Another difference is the deployment and configuration process. With AWS Lambda, developers need to manually create and configure the Lambda functions, set up triggers, and manage the deployment process. Chalice simplifies this process by providing a command-line interface (CLI) to deploy and manage serverless applications. It automatically sets up the necessary resources and handles the deployment process.
Supported Languages: AWS Lambda supports a variety of programming languages, including Node.js, Python, Java, and C#. Chalice, on the other hand, is specifically designed for Python applications. It provides a Pythonic API for building serverless applications, making it easier for Python developers to work with.
Scaling and Performance: AWS Lambda automatically scales the execution environment based on the incoming requests, allowing applications to handle large workloads efficiently. Chalice leverages the scaling capabilities of AWS Lambda, so it benefits from the same scalability. However, Chalice also provides additional features, such as automatic HTTP session management and content negotiation, which can enhance the performance of serverless applications.
Development and Debugging: In terms of development and debugging, AWS Lambda provides tools and features that can help developers test and troubleshoot their functions. Chalice, as a framework, provides additional capabilities for local testing and debugging. It allows developers to run serverless applications locally, making it easier to identify and fix issues during the development process.
Flexibility and Customization: While AWS Lambda provides a wide range of features and options for building serverless applications, Chalice offers a higher level of abstraction and simplifies the development process. Chalice provides a set of predefined routes and handlers, making it easier to build RESTful APIs. However, this level of abstraction may limit the flexibility and customization options available to developers.

AWS Lambda vs Chalice

Overview