Cloudflare Workers vs AWS Lambda: Real Cost Comparison 2026

TL;DR: Which One Should You Choose?

Pricing Breakdown: 2026 Edition

Cloudflare Workers Pricing

Cloudflare's pricing is beautifully simple — you only pay for CPU time, never for I/O wait time:

AWS Lambda Pricing

Lambda's pricing is more complex, charging for both requests and duration (including I/O wait time):

Real-World Cost Scenarios

Scenario 1: API Gateway (Low CPU, High I/O)

Use Case: REST API that fetches data from a database and returns JSON

• 100,000 requests/month
• Average duration: 220ms
• Average CPU time: 15ms
• Memory: 128 MB

💡 Winner: AWS Lambda — At this scale, Lambda's free tier covers everything. Workers requires the $5 subscription.

Scenario 2: Webhook Handler (1M requests/month)

Use Case: Processing incoming webhooks from Stripe, GitHub, etc.

• 1,000,000 requests/month
• Average duration: 180ms
• Average CPU time: 12ms
• Memory: 128 MB

💡 Winner: AWS Lambda — Still cheaper due to generous free tier.

Scenario 3: High-Traffic API (10M requests/month)

Use Case: Mobile app backend serving millions of users

• 10,000,000 requests/month
• Average duration: 200ms
• Average CPU time: 15ms
• Memory: 128 MB

🔥 Winner: Cloudflare Workers — 72% cheaper! The CPU-only billing model shines at scale.

Scenario 4: Image Processing (CPU-Intensive)

Use Case: Resizing and optimizing uploaded images

• 500,000 requests/month
• Average duration: 3 seconds
• Average CPU time: 2.8 seconds
• Memory: 512 MB

💡 Winner: AWS Lambda — For CPU-heavy workloads, Lambda's ability to allocate more memory and optimize for compute wins.

Performance: Edge vs Regional

Cloudflare Workers: Global Edge Network

• 330+ locations worldwide — Your code runs within 50ms of 95% of the world's population
• Zero cold starts — Workers are always warm, no initialization delay
• Instant global deployment — Deploy once, run everywhere in seconds
• Automatic failover — If one edge location fails, traffic routes to the next closest

AWS Lambda: Regional Deployment

• 33 regions — You choose specific regions to deploy to
• Cold starts — 100-500ms delay for first invocation (Java can be 1-2 seconds)
• SnapStart for Java — Reduces cold starts by 90% (Java only, as of 2026)
• Multi-region requires setup — Need to manually deploy to multiple regions

Developer Experience

Limitations to Know

Cloudflare Workers Limitations

• ❌ Fixed 128 MB memory — Can't increase for memory-intensive tasks
• ❌ 30-second timeout — Not suitable for long-running jobs
• ❌ No native Node.js — Some npm packages won't work
• ❌ Limited CPU time — 50ms on free tier, 30 seconds on paid
• ❌ No file system access — Must use KV, R2, or external storage

AWS Lambda Limitations

• ❌ Cold starts — 100-500ms delay (can be 1-2s for Java)
• ❌ Regional deployment — Not automatically global
• ❌ Complex pricing — Harder to predict costs
• ❌ VPC cold starts — Even slower if using VPC (though improved in 2024)
• ❌ Package size limits — 50 MB zipped, 250 MB unzipped

Migration Tips

Moving from Lambda to Workers

// Lambda Handler
exports.handler = async (event) => {
  const body = JSON.parse(event.body);
  return {
    statusCode: 200,
    body: JSON.stringify({ message: "Hello" })
  };
};

// Workers Equivalent
export default {
  async fetch(request) {
    const body = await request.json();
    return new Response(
      JSON.stringify({ message: "Hello" }),
      { headers: { "Content-Type": "application/json" } }
    );
  }
};

Moving from Workers to Lambda

// Workers Handler
export default {
  async fetch(request) {
    return new Response("Hello World");
  }
};

// Lambda Equivalent
exports.handler = async (event) => {
  return {
    statusCode: 200,
    body: "Hello World"
  };
};

Final Verdict: Which Should You Choose?