Google Cloud Functions vs Firebase Functions vs AWS Lambda: A Comparative Overview

January 03, 2022

Google Cloud Functions vs Firebase Functions vs AWS Lambda: A Comparative Overview

If you're on the hunt for a cloud orchestration service provider, you've likely come across Google Cloud Functions, Firebase Functions, and AWS Lambda. These serverless computing platforms allow you to run pieces of code without having to worry about server management, and each has its own unique features and strengths. Choosing the right platform for your project can be difficult, so we've compiled a comparison of Google Cloud Functions, Firebase Functions, and AWS Lambda to help you make an informed decision.

Pricing

Pricing is always an important factor when choosing a cloud service provider. All three services follow a pay-as-you-go model, but the pricing structures differ.

Google Cloud Functions: Google bills per 100 milliseconds of usage time, and each user gets a free allowance of 2 million invocations, 400,000 GB-seconds of execution time, and 5GB of outbound network data per month.
Firebase Functions: Firebase charges per invocation, and each user gets a free allowance of 125,000 invocations per month, with additional usage charged at $0.40 per million invocations.
AWS Lambda: AWS Lambda charges by the number of requests and execution time, with each user getting a free allowance of 1 million requests and 400,000 GB-seconds of compute time per month.

Overall, Google Cloud Functions and Firebase Functions offer better free allowances than AWS Lambda. However, pricing can vary depending on the nature of your project, so we recommend that you use the pricing calculators provided by each service to estimate your costs more accurately.

Language support

Different cloud orchestration platforms support different programming languages. Here's a quick breakdown of language support for each platform:

Google Cloud Functions: supports Node.js, Python, Go, and Ruby.
Firebase Functions: supports Node.js, Python, Go, and Java.
AWS Lambda: supports Node.js, Python, Go, Ruby, Java, .NET, and custom runtime.

AWS Lambda offers the largest selection of supported programming languages, making it a good choice if your project requires a less common language.

Scaling

The ability to scale horizontally is essential for any cloud orchestration platform. All three platforms offer automatic scaling, but they differ in their approach:

Google Cloud Functions: automatically scales based on the number of incoming requests.
Firebase Functions: automatically scales based on the number of incoming requests and can handle up to 1000 concurrent invocations per function.
AWS Lambda: automatically scales based on the number of incoming requests and can handle up to 1000 concurrent executions per account.

Firebase Functions and AWS Lambda can handle more concurrent invocations/execution than Google Cloud Functions, making them more suitable for larger applications.

Monitoring and Debugging

All three platforms offer monitoring and debugging features, but they differ in their sophistication:

Google Cloud Functions: integrates with Stackdriver Logging and Stackdriver Error Reporting to provide in-depth monitoring and debugging.
Firebase Functions: integrates with Firebase Crashlytics and Firebase Performance Monitoring to provide real-time serverless monitoring and debugging.
AWS Lambda: integrates with AWS CloudWatch to provide monitoring and debugging tools.

Google Cloud Functions and Firebase Functions offer better monitoring and debugging capabilities than AWS Lambda, especially for real-time monitoring and debugging.

Conclusion

Google Cloud Functions, Firebase Functions, and AWS Lambda each has its own unique advantages and drawbacks. The best choice for you will depend on your project's specific requirements, such as pricing, language support, scaling, and monitoring/debugging.

If pricing and language support are essential for you, Google Cloud Functions and Firebase Functions may be the better options. However, if you need more advanced monitoring and debugging capabilities, AWS Lambda may be a better choice. Ultimately, it would be best if you used the free trials offered by each platform to determine which is best suited for your project.

We hope this comparison has been helpful, and we wish you the best of luck in choosing the right cloud orchestration platform!

References

Written by Flare Compare Team on January 3, 2022.