Table of Contents

  • Introduction
  • What is AWS Fargate?
  • What are the components of AWS Fargate?
  • What are the advantage and disadvantages of AWS Fargate?
  • AWS Fargate pricing and competition
  • Conclusion
  • Related Resources

A Beginner's Guide to AWS Fargate: What You Need to Know

  • Tuan Yang
  • July 08, 2025
  • App Development
  • 8 min read
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Introduction

As containerization gains momentum, enterprises are searching for efficient ways to deploy and manage their applications. AWS Fargate, which is a serverless computing engine for containers, has emerged as a popular solution that eliminates the need to manage virtual machine clusters. This makes AWS Fargate an ideal choice for developers and organizations looking for hassle-free container management. 

In this beginner's guide to AWS Fargate, we'll cover the fundamentals of containerization and container orchestration. 

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What is AWS Fargate?

AWS Fargate is a powerful compute engine developed by Amazon that allows users to run containerized applications without the need for creating and managing clusters. With Fargate, users no longer have to manage their own EC2 instances, as it eliminates the requirement for customers to handle the infrastructure that supports it. Instead, Fargate serves as the computational engine, allowing users to focus on the essential aspects of their applications. 

Deploying your application with Fargate is simple and easy. All you need to do is package it in containers, specify the memory and CPU requirements, create IAM policies, and launch the application. Fargate takes care of the underlying virtual machines that host the containerized applications, making it an ideal platform for modern, containerized applications that require high scalability, availability, and agility. 

Furthermore, AWS Fargate also makes scaling your applications incredibly easy. The service provides all the necessary infrastructure and scalability required to run your containers in a highly available manner. Fargate seamlessly integrates with Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) and Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), launching and managing your containers automatically. Because of this, it is an ideal solution for developers who want to concentrate on designing and delivering their applications without having to worry about the infrastructure that their apps run on.  

What are the components of AWS Fargate?

There are several key components of Fargate that make it a robust and reliable platform for container deployment. These include: 

  • Clusters 

Clusters are logical groupings of tasks or services that can be used to isolate your applications. When using Fargate to run your tasks, it automatically manages your cluster resources, making it easy to deploy and manage your applications. 

  • Task Definitions 

A Task Definition comprises a text file that specifies the characteristics of a certain container inside your application. It includes the OS settings, containers to be utilized, ports to allow the program to communicate with it, and data levels that are used in conjunction with containers in the process, among other things. The particular variables accessible during task definition are determined by the needs of your application. 

  • Tasks 

At the cluster level, a task is an implementation of a task definition. You may determine how many instances of your application will run on the cluster by editing the task specification you just established in Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud. Tasks may be executed either as part of an ongoing service or as independent processes, allowing you control over how your application is deployed and managed. 

  • Services 

The required number of concurrent jobs operating in an ECS cluster is maintained via the usage of services. If any of your tasks stop working, Amazon's ECS service scheduler will start up a new instance according to your task description. This is done as a replacement and to provide a steady flow of servicing activities. 

  • Operating System and CPU Architecture 

Fargate is compatible with a wide range of operating systems and processor architectures. Fargate is compatible with Windows Server 2019 Full, Windows Server 2019 Core, and Amazon Linux 2. For Amazon ECS task description, you may choose between ARM and X86_64; X86_64 is required for Windows containers while both architectures are supported for Linux containers.

What are the advantage and disadvantages of AWS Fargate?

AWS Fargate is a container technology that has generated a lot of buzz, but does it truly live up to the hype? Let's take a closer look at some of the advantages and disadvantages of using AWS Fargate.

Some of the key advantages of AWS Fargate are:
 

  • Less Complexity 

Managing and scaling your containerized applications is a breeze using Fargate. Instead, you may concentrate your energy into choosing the optimal container configuration settings (such as CPU, storage spaces. and networking) for your deployment. 

  • Better Security 

Fargate embeds security within the container itself, making it easier for you to secure your IT infrastructure. Additionally, you can combine Fargate with container security companies to enhance your security posture. 

  • Lower Costs  

Unlike Amazon Elastic Container Service, Fargate only charges you when your container operations are really executing within the underlying virtual machine. Task scheduling is also well-handled by Fargate, simplifying the process of launching and stopping containers at predetermined periods. In addition, in January of 2019, consumers of Fargate noticed a significant price drop, reducing operational expenditures by 35-50 percent.

While AWS Fargate offers several advantages, there are also some disadvantages that you should consider. These include: 

  • Less Customization  

Fargate sacrifices customization options for ease of use, making it less suited for users who need greater control over their containers. Such users may need granular management of their IT infrastructure to meet their unique governance, risk, and compliance needs. 

  • More Expensive  

Fargate may end up being more expensive for simpler use cases, as Amazon charges Fargate users a higher per-hour fee than ECS and EKS users. Additionally, running your container workloads in the cloud may be more expensive than operating your own infrastructure on-premises, which may result in higher costs. 

  • Regional Availability 

AWS Fargate is gradually rolling out across Amazon’s cloud data centers, so it may not be available in all regions. This could limit the geographic reach of your applications and services, which could be a disadvantage for some users. 

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AWS Fargate pricing and competition

AWS Fargate is a container technology that comes with a pay-as-you-go model, meaning you only pay for the resources consumed by your containerized applications running on ECS or EKS. AWS Fargate pricing relies on several factors, including CPU and memory resources, time running, storage, and additional costs. You can define the amount of CPU and GB of RAM available for your applications, and AWS will charge you for each virtual CPU used and the amount of GB RAM used. 

In addition to CPU and memory resources, Fargate pricing also takes into account the time your containers are running, with costs calculated from the second you proceed to download the container image until the ECS job or EKS pod is terminated. There's also a minimum charge per second, depending on the operating system, and you'll need to pay for any additional storage you configure beyond the 20 GB of ephemeral storage that AWS provides by default. Finally, if your containers use other AWS services or transfer data, you may incur additional costs. 

In terms of competition, Fargate faces competition from other serverless compute engines such as Azure Container Instances. While these services have similar pricing models, there may be differences in pricing structure and feature offerings. Therefore, it's essential to compare the pricing and features of different serverless computing engines before making a decision.


Conclusion

AWS Fargate is a powerful tool for container management that offers several benefits to developers and organizations. It eliminates the need to manage virtual machine clusters, allowing for faster and more efficient deployment of containerized applications. With its pay-as-you-go pricing model, Fargate provides a cost-effective solution for businesses of all sizes. As containerization and cloud computing continue to grow in popularity, AWS Fargate is sure to play an increasingly vital role in the future of application development and deployment. 

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