AWS Fargate
Ranked 3 of 7 container hostings by recommenders
People recommend Fargate for running containers without managing servers, patching or scaling, especially for small workloads. Critics say it is complex and costly at small sizes.
People recommend Fargate for running containers without managing servers, patching or scaling, especially for small workloads. Critics say it is complex and costly at small sizes.
23 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 10
- criticize it
- 13
- approval share
- 43%
Recommended in 7 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 10 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 0.7 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 7 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
No servers, patching or scaling to manage
“ECS fargate is a must as well because no "server" means a ton less compliance burden”
Comment from 18 Sep 2026 in “Ask HN: Help choosing between AWS ECS and EKS” “no servers to manage, no patching, no scaling headaches”
Comment from 5 Nov 2025 in “Deploying Temporal on AWS ECS with Terraform” Good fit for small workloads
“fargate if your just running a few containers”
Comment from 23 Apr 2026 in “I Am Building a Cloud” “if workload is small this will do the most.”
Comment from 18 Sep 2026 in “Ask HN: Help choosing between AWS ECS and EKS” Works alongside Lambda and ECS
“I've deployed Rust binaries to both Lambda and Fargate in AWS and they've been very performant.”
Comment from 12 May 2026 in “If AI Writes Your Code, Why Use Python?” “I like ECS + Fargate, Lambda, DynamoDB, SQS.”
Comment from 28 Aug 2026 in “I used AWS cognito for a startup. I wouldn't do it again”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Complex, hard to set up
“I still have battle scars from trying to set up AWS Fargate. It's just a hodge podge of corporately requested features at this point.”
Comment from 29 Apr 2026 in “Ghostty is leaving GitHub” “Fargate (with Firecracker/Docker) is hellishly complex and forces you into all sorts of AWS BS”
Comment from 27 Jun 2026 in “Run isolated sandboxes with full lifecycle control: AWS introduces MicroVMs” “I find them just as complicated as k8s.”
Comment from 15 Jun 2026 in “What job interviews taught me about Kubernetes” Costly at smallest sizes
“Wait until you run the smallest Fargate capacities and then Container Insights costs more in CloudWatch than your infrastructure costs”
Comment from 9 Feb 2026 in “Don't rent the cloud, own instead” “Fargate is leaner than renting a whole server to run docker, right? So it's cheaper as well? - Well, no.”
Comment from 10 May 2026 in “I returned to AWS, and was reminded why I left” Slow to start tasks
“we went from a ~3 minute startup in fargate to ~30 seconds with the ASG”
Comment from 17 Nov 2025 in “Deploying Temporal on AWS ECS with Terraform” “Fargate takes minutes to launch while Lambda takes a second or less.”
Comment from 26 Jun 2026 in “Run isolated sandboxes with full lifecycle control: AWS introduces MicroVMs” Does not scale to zero
“It doesn't automatically scale to 0 like Cloud Run and Container Apps.”
Comment from 14 Oct 2026 in “AWS Lambda Web Functions” “Fargate, just like ECS, doesn't natively scale to zero.”
Comment from 13 Oct 2026 in “AWS Lambda Web Functions”
Other container hostings people recommend
The four most recommended other container hostings, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google Cloud Run | 38 | 17 | 69% | 11 | — | Approved |
| Amazon ECS | 34 | 9 | 79% | 9 | — | Approved |
| AWS FargateThis page | 10 | 13 | 43% | 7 | — | — |
| Cloudflare Containers | 9 | 5 | 64% | 7 | — | — |
| AWS ECS Fargate | 9 | 1 | 90% | 6 | — | — |
What people said
23 of the 24 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“It doesn't automatically scale to 0 like Cloud Run and Container Apps.”
“Fargate, just like ECS, doesn't natively scale to zero.”
“It's already vendor locked because the business stake is to high to convert.”
“ECS fargate is a must as well because no "server" means a ton less compliance burden”
“if workload is small this will do the most.”
“I like ECS + Fargate, Lambda, DynamoDB, SQS.”
“Fargate (with Firecracker/Docker) is hellishly complex and forces you into all sorts of AWS BS”
“Fargate takes minutes to launch while Lambda takes a second or less.”
“Fargate isn't the secure choice in that scenario”
“Fargate does kind of seem like a superior option”
“I find them just as complicated as k8s.”
“I've deployed Rust binaries to both Lambda and Fargate in AWS and they've been very performant.”
“Fargate is leaner than renting a whole server to run docker, right? So it's cheaper as well? - Well, no.”
“the savings are dwarfed by the engineering costs”
“I still have battle scars from trying to set up AWS Fargate. It's just a hodge podge of corporately requested features at this point.”
“fargate if your just running a few containers”
“Wait until you run the smallest Fargate capacities and then Container Insights costs more in CloudWatch than your infrastructure costs”
“thorny and treacherous AWS documentation forest”
“These both seem like poor fits.”
“AWS Fargate/ECS, etc) fit the bill without the complexity, moving parts and failure modes of K8s.”
“we went from a ~3 minute startup in fargate to ~30 seconds with the ASG”
“a container orchestrator trying to integrate with another container orchestrater”
“no servers to manage, no patching, no scaling headaches”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.