Question 1

What's the difference between AWS Fargate and Amazon EC2 for containers?

Accepted Answer

With EC2, you choose and manage the virtual machines (instance types, scaling, patching, capacity, and cluster sizing). With Fargate, you don’t manage servers or EC2 instances at all—you define CPU/memory for each container task or pod, and AWS runs it for you. Fargate is simpler operationally, while EC2 can be cheaper at steady high utilization and offers more control over the underlying host.

Question 2

When should I use Fargate?

Accepted Answer

Use Fargate when you want to run containers without managing servers, especially for microservices, APIs, event-driven workers, scheduled jobs, dev/test environments, and workloads with spiky or unpredictable traffic. It’s a strong fit when your team wants faster delivery and less infrastructure maintenance. Consider EC2-based clusters when you need specialized host-level control, custom AMIs/agents, GPUs (where applicable), or consistently high utilization that benefits from reserved capacity on instances.

Question 3

How much does Fargate cost?

Accepted Answer

Fargate pricing is based primarily on the vCPU and memory you allocate to each running task (or pod) and how long it runs, plus any additional charges for data transfer, load balancers, NAT gateways, logging, and storage you use. Costs increase with higher CPU/memory settings, longer runtimes, and higher task counts. Savings plans may apply in some cases, and right-sizing CPU/memory is one of the biggest levers to control spend.

Fargate

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