Hosting containers without Kubernetes hassle: App Runner, Container Apps or Cloud Run?
For 90 percent of SMB container workloads, these three are enough. Cloud Run is the most mature, App Runner the simplest, Container Apps the richest (KEDA, Dapr).
support/cloud-platforms/container-apps-app-runner-cloud-run-keuzesteps: 5
Try this first
- Pure HTTP service, scale-to-zero wanted, low ops: AWS App Runner or GCP Cloud Run. Push image, get URL.
- Event-driven workloads, queues, or microservices talking to each other: Azure Container Apps. KEDA scaling on queue depth, Dapr for service mesh.
- Need job scheduling alongside HTTP: Cloud Run Jobs or Container Apps Jobs. App Runner is requests-driven only.
- For very low traffic (< 10 req/min): scale-to-zero pays off. No idle compute, you pay request time.
- For steady high traffic: calculate whether ECS Fargate with fixed nodes is cheaper. Container Apps and Cloud Run charge per request, that adds up.
When to bring us in
For 20+ services with interdependencies, or when you want service mesh features (mTLS, distributed tracing), the choice tips towards EKS, AKS or GKE. A short review on that switch pays off.
See also
- Everyone logs in with the AWS root accountRoot is for emergencies and billing. Day-to-day work belongs in IAM users or SSO.
- Every developer has AdministratorAccessAdministratorAccess everywhere is convenient now, painful later. Start with role-based policies.
- Everyone has individual IAM users with their own passwordIdentity Center (formerly AWS SSO) links to your IdP and issues temporary credentials per session.
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