Compare / AWS
The AWS alternative that skips ECS, IAM and the VPC
Running one container on AWS means ECS or EKS, a VPC, an Application Load Balancer, IAM roles, and ECR. Lizard is `lizard up`. The trade is real and worth naming: you give up the depth of AWS and get back the week it takes to wire it together.
Why developers look for a AWS alternative
The simple path just closed
AWS App Runner stopped accepting new customers on 30 April 2026. AWS now points leavers at Amazon ECS Express Mode, which hands back a load balancer, a VPC, and a task definition.
A cluster costs $73 before a pod runs
Amazon EKS charges $0.10 an hour for the control plane, and an Application Load Balancer adds roughly $16 a month on top.
Egress is the quiet line
AWS charges about $0.09 per GB to the internet. Lizard charges $0.045.
The bill is unreadable on purpose
Compute, transfer, requests, NAT gateway, load balancer, logs, and storage arrive as separate line items across separate services.
Lizard vs AWS
Every figure read off AWS’s published pricing and our own. Last verified: 27 August 2026.
| Compared by | Lizard | AWS |
|---|---|---|
| Deploying one container | lizard up | ECS or EKS, a VPC, an ALB, IAM, and ECR |
| Compute | $0.0250128 per vCPU-hour, $0.0125064 per GB-hour, on measured use | Fargate at $0.04048 per vCPU-hour and $0.004445 per GB-hour, on the reserved size |
| Control plane | None to pay for | EKS at $0.10 an hour — $73 a month per cluster |
| Load balancer | Included, with TLS on the first deploy | An ALB from about $16 a month, plus capacity units |
| Egress | $0.045 per GB from the first byte | About $0.09 per GB |
| Managed Postgres | lizard add postgres — same project, same bill | RDS, its own service, its own bill |
| Object storage | $0.0135 per GB-month | S3, plus request charges and transfer |
| Isolation | A pod per service with a default-deny network policy; Sandboxes use Kubernetes pods with runc and a shared host kernel | Firecracker under Fargate and Lambda; shared kernels under EKS pods |
When AWS is the better choice
Regulated workloads, deep VPC requirements, GPU fleets, petabyte storage, exotic managed services, committed-use discounts, or an existing enterprise agreement. AWS has more services than anyone, a bigger combined footprint of regions, zones, and edge locations than anyone, and compliance paperwork nobody else can match. If your requirement list has a service only AWS sells, that decides it.
Moving from AWS
No Dockerfile required — lizardpack detects the stack and writes one on the build node. If your repo already has a Dockerfile, it is used as it stands.
Frequently asked questions
For running containers without the surrounding infrastructure, Lizard, Railway, Render, or Fly.io. For raw servers at low prices, Hetzner. For serverless HTTP, Google Cloud Run. AWS remains the right answer when you need its breadth, its regions, or its compliance coverage.
AWS moved App Runner to maintenance and stopped accepting new customers on 30 April 2026, keeping existing services running with no new features. The recommended path is Amazon ECS Express Mode, which creates the ECS service, the load balancer, and the networking from one command.
Lizard’s CPU rate is $0.0250128 per vCPU-hour of measured use, below Fargate Linux/x86 in US East (N. Virginia) at about $0.04048 per allocated vCPU-hour. Fargate memory is cheaper per unit: about $0.004446 per GB-hour versus Lizard’s $0.0125064. Lizard Pro is $19/month and includes $19 of usage. Compare actual CPU and memory use, storage, transfer and the other AWS services your app needs; a CPU price alone does not establish the whole bill.
Yes, and your Dockerfile comes with you — Lizard rebuilds from source on its own build nodes rather than pulling your ECR image. Point lizard up at the repo; a Dockerfile with a real build step is used as it stands, and dockerfilePath forces it. Then recreate the environment variables with lizard secrets set and attach the domain with lizard domain app.example.com, followed by lizard domain verify app.example.com. There is no task definition, VPC, or target group to rebuild.
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