Re:Ask HN: Why aren't you using a public cloud?
by nvivo on Sunday May 20, 2018 @08:53PM
(#17115542)
If you have a small number of requests over a large period, serverless is cheaper (that includes an api that is idle most of the time and peaks at a very high rate occasionally).
But once you go live and start to grow, there is a point where the lambda cost equals the instance price. And with an instance, you can almost always do a lot more than that number. Again, that will work if your requests are predictable enough that you can see this number consistently over a large period, say, every week at least.
It's not an order of magnitude, but it's something. Probably not worth the effort, for most, though, and I have no idea if "dedicated box" services can approximate something similar.