It's worth pointing out that AWS allocates CPU shares based on the memory size selected for a function. The CPU performance you'd get with a function running on

It's worth pointing out that AWS allocates CPU shares based on the memory size selected for a function. The CPU performance you'd get with a function running on 256MB would probably be significantly lower than a core of a c4.large instance. It's unlikely that you'd get cheaper raw compute from any cloud vendor when using Lambda-like products, compared to their IaaS offerings. The savings are in lower ops costs, easier auto-scaling, integration with tons of other AWS products, no minimum cost for services with a small amount of requests, etc.