Serverless and container prices: Cloud Run, Lambda, Fargate, Azure
What a container or function costs a month on Google Cloud Run, Cloud Run functions, AWS Lambda and Fargate, Azure Functions and Azure Container Apps, each in its cheapest region, with the cheapest VM of the same size beside them. Set the size and how busy it is.
Prices checked 25 October 2026, 16:05 UTC, from each provider's own price data. List prices in USD; a GB is 1,024 MB on every cloud here.
| Service | A month 730 hours | Region | An hour | Request fees included | Free tier taken off |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| VM Cheapest VM, spotAWS c7g.medium, 1 vCPU · 2 GB, the same price busy or idle | $2.74 | ap-south-2 | $0.004 | – | – |
| AWS Fargate Spot1 running all month | $10.93 | eu-west-1 | $0.015 | – | – |
| VM Cheapest VM, on-demandAWS c6g.medium, 1 vCPU · 2 GB, the same price busy or idle | $16.46 | ap-south-1 | $0.023 | – | – |
| AWS Fargate1 running all month | $36.04 | us-west-2 | $0.049 | – | – |
| Cloud Run instance-based1 running all month | $52.60 | us-central1 | $0.072 | – | −$5.22 |
| Cloud Run request-basedbilled while busy | $70.99 | us-central1 | $0.097 | not counted | −$5.22 |
| Cloud Run functionsbilled while busy | $70.99 | europe-north1 | $0.097 | not counted | −$5.22 |
| AWS Lambdabilled while busy, 2,048 MB | $72.84 | ap-southeast-7 | $0.100 | not counted | −$6.00 |
| Azure Container Apps consumptionbilled while busy | $73.44 | uaenorth | $0.101 | not counted | −$5.40 |
| Azure Functions Flex Consumptionbilled while busy, 2,048 MB instance | $134 | eastus | $0.184 | not counted | −$2.60 |
1 vCPU and 2 GiB, busy all month, in each service's cheapest region anywhere. Request fees depend on the number of requests: choose Requests to count them. Free tiers taken off.
Busy share is the part of the month an instance handles requests: Cloud Run (request-based), Cloud Run functions, Lambda, Azure Functions and Container Apps bill only that; Fargate and instance-based Cloud Run bill every hour they run. List prices; data transfer, storage and commitments are left out. One workload in detail: the calculator; when a VM gets cheaper, size by size: VM vs serverless.
Unit prices
Each service in its cheapest region, per hour of a vCPU or a GiB and per million requests; every region is on the service's page.
| Service | Region | Compute | Requests per million | Free a month |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google Cloud Run Google Cloud · 43 regions | us-central1 | vCPU $0.0864 an hour, request-based GiB $0.009 an hour, request-based | $0.40 | request-based: 180,000 vCPU-seconds, 360,000 GiB-seconds and 2 million requests; instance-based: 240,000 vCPU-seconds and 450,000 GiB-seconds |
| Google Cloud Run functions Google Cloud · 40 regions | us-central1 | vCPU $0.0864 an hour GiB $0.009 an hour | $0.40 | 180,000 vCPU-seconds, 360,000 GiB-seconds and 2 million invocations |
| AWS Lambda AWS · 34 regions | ap-east-2 | GB, x86 $0.054 an hour GB, Arm $0.0432 an hour | $0.18 | 1 million requests and 400,000 GB-seconds |
| AWS Fargate AWS · 34 regions | us-east-1 | vCPU, x86 $0.04048 an hour GB, x86 $0.004445 an hour | none | None |
| Azure Functions Flex Consumption Azure · 53 regions | eastus | GB $0.0936 an hour, on demand GB $0.0144 an hour, always ready idle | $0.40 | 100,000 GB-seconds and 250,000 executions |
| Azure Container Apps Azure · 57 regions | eastus | vCPU $0.0864 an hour, active GiB $0.0108 an hour, active | $0.40 | 180,000 vCPU-seconds, 360,000 GiB-seconds and 2 million requests |
Compare
- Every service
- Cloud Run
- Cloud Run functions
- Lambda
- Fargate
- Azure Functions
- Container Apps
- Cloud Run vs Lambda vs Azure Functions
- Fargate vs Cloud Run
- Calculator
- VM vs serverless
Questions
Which serverless service is cheapest?
For 1 vCPU and 2 GiB busy all month, each in its cheapest region with free tiers taken off: AWS Fargate Spot $10.93, AWS Fargate $36.04, Cloud Run instance-based $52.60, Cloud Run request-based $70.99, Cloud Run functions $70.99, AWS Lambda $72.84, Azure Container Apps consumption $73.44 and Azure Functions Flex Consumption $134 a month; the cheapest on-demand VM of that size is $16.46 (AWS c6g.medium). A service that is busy only part of the time costs less on request-billed services; set how busy above.
How are the prices compared?
Every price is the provider's own list price per region, turned into the same units: per vCPU-second, per GiB-second (the "GB" of Lambda, Fargate and Azure Functions is 1,024 MB) and per million requests, then into a month of 730 hours for the size you choose. Each service is billed for the smallest size it offers that fits: Lambda gets the memory that gives the vCPUs (1,769 MB per vCPU), Azure Functions the instance that fits (512 MB, 2,048 MB or 4,096 MB), Container Apps and Fargate their next size up.
When is a VM cheaper than serverless?
When the work keeps an instance busy most of the time. The cheapest VM of the size is in the table; the VM against serverless page has the break-even point per size and zone.