Serverless Function Cost Estimator
Compare monthly costs for AWS Lambda, Google Cloud Functions, and Azure Functions.
Going serverless? Don't get surprised by your monthly bill. Use our calculator to estimate your costs based on invocations, execution time, and memory. Make an informed decision on which provider is best for your workload and budget.
Serverless Function Cost Estimator
Estimate monthly costs for AWS Lambda, GCP, and Azure Functions.
About This Tool
The Serverless Cost Estimator is an essential financial planning tool for modern developers and businesses leveraging serverless architectures. Serverless platforms like AWS Lambda, Google Cloud Functions, and Azure Functions offer incredible scalability and operational simplicity, but their pay-per-use pricing models can be difficult to predict. This calculator demystifies serverless billing by allowing you to input the key metrics that drive cost: the number of monthly invocations, the average execution time of your function, and the memory you allocate to it. It then calculates your estimated monthly bill for each of the top three cloud providers, taking their specific pricing rates and generous free tiers into account. This enables you to forecast expenses accurately, choose the most cost-effective platform for your specific workload, and avoid the dreaded end-of-month bill shock. It's a must-use tool for anyone building or scaling a serverless application.
How to Use This Tool
- Use the slider to set your expected number of monthly function invocations.
- Use the slider to set the average execution time for your function in milliseconds.
- Select the memory allocation for your function in megabytes (MB).
- Click the "Calculate Serverless Costs" button.
- The tool will display the estimated monthly bill for AWS Lambda, GCP Functions, and Azure Functions.
- Compare the results to see how pricing differs between the major cloud providers.
In-Depth Guide
The Components of Serverless Pricing
Serverless pricing is typically broken down into two main components. The first is the number of requests or "invocations." You pay a very small fee for every time your function is triggered. The second, and usually larger component, is the "compute duration." This is a measure of how long your function runs and how much memory it uses, often billed in "GB-seconds." Our calculator combines both of these to give you a total cost estimate.
How Memory Affects Cost (and Performance)
When you choose a memory allocation for your serverless function, you are not just buying memory. On all major platforms, allocating more memory also proportionally allocates more vCPU power. This means that a function with 2048MB of memory will run significantly faster than the same function with 256MB. This can lead to a surprising outcome: sometimes, paying for more memory can actually lower your total cost, because the reduction in billable execution time is greater than the increase in the per-millisecond memory cost.
ARM vs. x86: A New Cost Variable
AWS Lambda and other providers now offer the ability to run functions on processors with different architectures, typically x86 (from Intel/AMD) and ARM (like AWS's own Graviton processors). ARM-based functions are often significantly cheaper for the same level of performance—sometimes up to 20% less. While our calculator uses a blended average, if cost is your absolute top priority, benchmarking your specific workload on ARM could unlock further savings.
Beyond the Big Three
While this tool covers the three largest cloud providers, the serverless ecosystem is vast and growing. Other platforms like Cloudflare Workers, Vercel Functions, and Netlify Functions have different pricing models. They often price primarily on requests and CPU time rather than memory-duration, which can be more cost-effective for certain types of short-lived, compute-intensive tasks. Always investigate the best platform for your specific job.