AWS Lambda
Amazon's function-as-a-service primitive, running a handler on demand in a short-lived isolated environment and billing per invocation.
The raw serverless primitive.
Lambda runs a handler on demand in an isolated, short-lived environment and bills per request and per gigabyte-second of execution. It is a building block rather than a platform: the database, object storage, HTTP gateway and session handling are separate AWS services assembled around it. The execution model carries hard edges — a bounded run time per invocation, a limit on deployment package size, a small ephemeral filesystem and no state carried from one invocation to the next.
The managed runtimes AWS lists are Node.js, Python, Java, .NET and Ruby, alongside an OS-only runtime for everything else and the option of supplying a container image. Any language outside the managed set arrives through a custom runtime: a bootstrap executable implementing the Lambda runtime loop, in practice supplied by a community layer rather than written by hand.
A monthly allowance of requests and compute time is included and recurs each month rather than expiring, with usage above it metered.
Identity
- Parent
- Amazon Web Services
- Status
- Active
Regions and law
- Regions
- United Arab Emirates, Australia, Bahrain, Brazil, Canada, Switzerland, Germany, Spain, France, United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, India, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Malaysia, New Zealand, Sweden, Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan, United States, South Africa1
Sources
- 2026-08-01: Regions
docs.aws.amazon.com/general/latest/gr/lambda-service.html - 2026-07-31: Runtimes
docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/lambda-runtimes.html - 2026-07-31: Pricing model, Free tier, Entry price, Typical ceiling, Billed
aws.amazon.com/lambda/pricing/ - 2026-08-02: Paid, Exit
aws.amazon.com/agreement/
Last reviewed 2026-08-01.
Complete this record.