Overview

Azure Functions

Stacks686

Followers705

Votes62

Azure App Service

Stacks315

Followers380

Votes11

Azure App Service vs Azure Functions: What are the differences?

Azure App Service and Azure Functions are both services provided by Microsoft Azure for building and hosting web applications and APIs. Here are the key differences between the two.

Architecture and Functionality: Azure App Service is designed to host web applications and APIs, providing a full-fledged hosting environment with support for multiple languages and frameworks. On the other hand, Azure Functions is a serverless compute service that allows you to run small pieces of code (functions) in the cloud, triggered by events or schedules. It provides a more lightweight and event-driven architecture.
Scaling and Cost: Azure App Service allows you to scale your application horizontally by adding more instances, or vertically by upgrading the underlying VMs. The scaling options are more flexible but also require manual configuration. Azure Functions, being a serverless service, automatically scales based on the incoming workload. You only pay for the actual execution time of the functions, making it more cost-effective for sporadic or bursty workloads.
Execution Model: Azure App Service uses a continuous execution model where your application is constantly running and waiting for incoming requests. It provides features like session state management and application-level caching. Azure Functions, on the other hand, follows an on-demand execution model where functions are instantiated and executed only when triggered. They are stateless by design, making them suitable for lightweight and short-lived tasks.
Triggers and Bindings: Azure App Service primarily relies on HTTP traffic as the trigger for your application, although it also supports other protocols like FTP and WebSockets. In contrast, Azure Functions provide a wide range of triggers, including HTTP requests, timers, message queues, data changes in Azure services, and more. Bindings in Azure Functions allow you to easily connect to different data sources or services without writing extensive code.
Deployment and DevOps: Azure App Service provides a more traditional deployment model where you package your application and deploy it to the hosting environment. It supports different deployment methods including Git, Visual Studio, and Azure DevOps. Azure Functions, being a code-first approach, integrates well with modern DevOps practices. It supports CI/CD pipelines and can be easily deployed using tools like Azure DevOps or Azure Functions Core Tools.
Service Integrations: Azure App Service integrates well with other Azure services like Azure SQL Database, Azure Cache, and Azure Application Insights, allowing you to build robust and scalable applications. Azure Functions also have similar integrations but are more focused on event-driven architectures. They have built-in integrations with Azure Event Hubs, Service Bus, Storage, and more, making it easier to build serverless workflows and event-driven applications.

In summary, Azure App Service is suitable for hosting web applications and APIs with more flexibility and control over the hosting environment. Azure Functions, on the other hand, are designed for lightweight and event-driven tasks, providing automatic scaling and cost optimization for serverless workloads.

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Detailed Comparison

Azure Functions	Azure App Service
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.	Quickly build, deploy, and scale web apps created with popular frameworks .NET, .NET Core, Node.js, Java, PHP, Ruby, or Python, in containers or running on any operating system. Meet rigorous, enterprise-grade performance, security, and compliance requirements by using the fully managed platform for your operational and monitoring tasks.
Easily schedule event-driven tasks across services;Expose Functions as HTTP API endpoints;Scale Functions based on customer demand;Develop how you want, using a browser-based UI or existing tools;Get continuous deployment, remote debugging, and authentication out of the box	-
Statistics
Stacks 686	Stacks 315
Followers 705	Followers 380
Votes 62	Votes 11
Pros & Cons
Pros 14 Pay only when invoked 11 Great developer experience for C# 9 Multiple languages supported 7 Great debugging support 5 Can be used as lightweight https service Cons 1 No persistent (writable) file system available 1 Not suited for long-running applications 1 Sporadic server & language runtime issues 1 Poor support for Linux environments	Pros 6 .Net Framework 5 Visual studio
Integrations
Azure DevOps Java Bitbucket Node.js Microsoft Azure GitHub Visual Studio Code JavaScript Azure Cosmos DB C#	Python .NET Ruby PHP Node.js .NET Core

What are some alternatives to Azure Functions, Azure App Service?

Heroku

Heroku is a cloud application platform – a new way of building and deploying web apps. Heroku lets app developers spend 100% of their time on their application code, not managing servers, deployment, ongoing operations, or scaling.

Clever Cloud

Clever Cloud is a polyglot cloud application platform. The service helps developers to build applications with many languages and services, with auto-scaling features and a true pay-as-you-go pricing model.

Google App Engine

Google has a reputation for highly reliable, high performance infrastructure. With App Engine you can take advantage of the 10 years of knowledge Google has in running massively scalable, performance driven systems. App Engine applications are easy to build, easy to maintain, and easy to scale as your traffic and data storage needs grow.

Red Hat OpenShift

OpenShift is Red Hat's Cloud Computing Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering. OpenShift is an application platform in the cloud where application developers and teams can build, test, deploy, and run their applications.

AWS Lambda

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.

AWS Elastic Beanstalk

Once you upload your application, Elastic Beanstalk automatically handles the deployment details of capacity provisioning, load balancing, auto-scaling, and application health monitoring.

Render

Render is a unified platform to build and run all your apps and websites with free SSL, a global CDN, private networks and auto deploys from Git.

Hasura

An open source GraphQL engine that deploys instant, realtime GraphQL APIs on any Postgres database.

Cloud 66

Cloud 66 gives you everything you need to build, deploy and maintain your applications on any cloud, without the headache of dealing with "server stuff". Frameworks: Ruby on Rails, Node.js, Jamstack, Laravel, GoLang, and more.

Jelastic

Jelastic is a Multi-Cloud DevOps PaaS for ISVs, telcos, service providers and enterprises needing to speed up development, reduce cost of IT infrastructure, improve uptime and security.