This interactive tool will help you determine whether a Serverless, Containerized Microservices, or Distributed Data Processing architecture is the right fit for your needs. Answer the following questions about your project's characteristics, and we'll provide a tailored recommendation based on common industry best practices.
Your Recommendation
Based on your answers, here's our analysis.
Architecture Affinity Score
Architecture At-a-Glance
A general comparison of the three architectures.
| Criterion | Serverless | Containers | Distributed Data |
|---|---|---|---|
| Primary Use Case | Event-driven tasks, APIs, background jobs | Long-running services, web apps, complex APIs | Large-scale batch/stream data processing |
| Scalability Model | Automatic, per-request scaling to zero | Cluster-based, requires configuration | Scales data processing nodes, job-based |
| Cost Model | Pay-per-execution, very cost-effective for sporadic traffic | Pay for running instances/nodes (always on) | Pay for cluster uptime during jobs |
| Operational Overhead | Very Low (managed by cloud provider) | Medium-High (manage containers, orchestrator) | Medium (managed services like EMR help) |
| State Management | Stateless by design; requires external DB/cache | Can manage state within services or externally | Inherently stateful for data processing jobs |
| Typical Latency | Low, but can have cold start delays | Consistently low latency for "warm" services | High (minutes to hours), not for real-time APIs |