Detailed, opinionated comparisons of AWS services — with decision frameworks to help you choose the right tool for your specific situation.
Nov 9, 2026
Citrix, VMware Horizon (now Omnissa), Amazon WorkSpaces and Azure Virtual Desktop compared: licensing, cost drivers and which fits. Short answer: your apps on AWS, WorkSpaces; Microsoft 365 E3/E5, AVD.
Nov 2, 2026
WorkOS vs Clerk on list prices as of November 2026: WorkOS gives 1M MAUs free and charges $125 per SSO or SCIM connection; Clerk Pro is $25 a month with 50,000 retained users, $75 per extra SSO connection and a $100 B2B add-on. Which suits a product selling to enterprises, and which suits one that mostly isn't yet.
Oct 26, 2026
Three ways to run FHIR for a payer API, a health app or an analytics platform on AWS: AWS HealthLake (managed, $0.27 per data store hour plus storage and queries), HAPI FHIR (open-source Java server you run on ECS or EKS) and Medplum (open-source platform, hosted from $2,000 a month or self-hosted). Cost, control, SMART on FHIR, and when each fits.
Oct 26, 2026
For defense suppliers and engineering firms handling CUI or export-controlled technical data: what AWS GovCloud (US) and the commercial US Regions each offer (FedRAMP High vs Moderate, US-person access, ITAR), what DFARS 252.204-7012 requires of cloud providers, and the costs of choosing GovCloud.
Oct 26, 2026
Three common ways to send password resets, receipts and notifications from an app: Amazon SES ($0.10 per 1,000, in your AWS account), Resend (developer-first, free tier, $20 for 50,000) and Postmark (transactional focus, separate message streams). Pricing, dedicated IPs, separation of marketing mail and what you build yourself.
Oct 26, 2026
Amazon Cognito with its Lite, Essentials and Plus tiers against self-hosted Keycloak on Kubernetes: cost per monthly active user, features, customisation, multi-tenancy and the operational cost of running identity yourself.
Oct 26, 2026
Choosing customer authentication (CIAM) in 2026 (Amazon Cognito, Auth0 by Okta, Clerk, WorkOS AuthKit, Microsoft Entra External ID, Supabase Auth, Firebase/Google Identity Platform and Stytch) compared on price per user, free tiers, B2B SSO, AI agent support, ownership and lock-in.
Oct 26, 2026
Running authentication yourself in 2026 (Keycloak, Zitadel (now AGPL), Ory Kratos and Hydra, and the Better Auth library that now maintains Auth.js) compared on licence, architecture, multi-tenancy, standards and operational weight.
Oct 26, 2026
How AI agents should authenticate and act on behalf of users in 2026 (Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Identity, Auth0 for AI Agents (Token Vault, CIBA), Okta Cross App Access (ID-JAG), and Cloudflare Access with Managed OAuth and MCP server portals) and how each maps to the MCP authorization spec.
Oct 26, 2026
Adding enterprise SSO (SAML/OIDC) and SCIM provisioning to a B2B SaaS product in 2026 (WorkOS, Auth0 B2B, Clerk's B2B add-on and Amazon Cognito) compared on pricing models, admin self-service, SCIM and what your first enterprise customer will ask for.
Oct 25, 2026
CloudFront now sells flat-rate plans ($0, $15, $200, $1,000 a month) with WAF, DNS and no overages, which removes Cloudflare's oldest pricing advantage. A side-by-side on price, security, edge compute and the AWS egress cost of putting Cloudflare in front of AWS.
Oct 25, 2026
R2 charges nothing for egress and $0.015/GB-month for storage. S3 charges $0.09/GB to the internet, unless the traffic goes through CloudFront, where a flat-rate plan now covers it. Worked costs for web delivery, data sharing and backups, and the features each one lacks.
Oct 25, 2026
Three serverless platforms, compared after Lambda Web Functions (October 2026) brought active-CPU billing to Lambda. Lambda Event Functions bill memory × wall-clock time, Web Functions and Vercel bill active CPU plus memory, Workers bills CPU time. Worked costs at 50M requests a month, the limits that decide most projects, and who each one suits.
Oct 25, 2026
Aurora DSQL now has foreign keys and sequences, which makes it a real option for new apps. How it compares to DynamoDB and Aurora PostgreSQL on data model, transactions, multi-Region writes, limits and price, and which workloads fit each.
Oct 25, 2026
Four ways to buy managed Postgres in 2026: Aurora Serverless v2 inside your AWS account, Neon (now part of Databricks) with branching and scale to zero, Supabase as a backend platform, and PlanetScale Postgres from $5 a month. Pricing units, what each includes, and the tradeoffs.
Oct 25, 2026
Managed Kubernetes on AWS, Google Cloud and Azure compared on what actually differs in 2026: control plane fees, extended and long-term support, SLAs, and the fully managed modes (EKS Auto Mode, GKE Autopilot, AKS Automatic).
Oct 25, 2026
Five ways to connect VPCs and services on AWS, with US East pricing: free peering, Transit Gateway at $0.05 per attachment-hour, Cloud WAN for global networks, PrivateLink for single services and VPC Lattice for service-to-service with IAM auth. What each costs at 10 VPCs and when to use it.
Oct 25, 2026
GitHub cut hosted runner prices in January 2026 (Linux 2-core now $0.006 a minute) and postponed its planned charge for self-hosted runners. How that compares with CodeBuild-managed runners and self-hosted runners on EC2 or EKS, on cost, AWS access and maintenance.
Oct 25, 2026
Claude now runs on all three clouds, OpenAI models on Bedrock and Foundry, Gemini only on Vertex. How the three platforms compare on model catalogue, capacity options (Bedrock Priority, Flex and Reserved tiers; Foundry PTUs; Vertex provisioned throughput), agent runtimes, residency and billing.
Oct 25, 2026
Three warehouses on AWS with three billing models: Redshift Serverless at $0.375 per RPU-hour, Snowflake credits from $2 to $4 by edition, Databricks DBUs by SKU. All now read Apache Iceberg. How they compare on cost shape, AWS integration, governance and the teams each suits.
Oct 25, 2026
Elasticsearch is open source again (AGPL since 2024) and OpenSearch has its own foundation under the Linux Foundation. How Amazon OpenSearch Service, OpenSearch Serverless, Elastic Cloud and self-hosting on EKS compare on licence, features, operations and price.
Oct 25, 2026
Four ways to run Next.js for an AWS company: Amplify Hosting, OpenNext with SST in your own account, a Node container on ECS behind CloudFront, or Vercel. Pricing, feature compatibility, caching and who each one fits.
Oct 25, 2026
The seven Rs of migration (retire, retain, rehost, relocate, repurchase, replatform, refactor) compared on cost, speed, risk and what each changes. How to choose per application rather than per estate, with examples from Windows, SQL Server, Java and Exchange workloads.
Oct 25, 2026
Four ways to run SQL Server workloads on AWS, compared on licensing (License Included, BYOL and Microsoft's 2019 rules), operations, compatibility and cost, with the end-of-support dates that force the decision: SQL Server 2016 in July 2026 and 2017 in October 2027.
Oct 25, 2026
Oracle Database@AWS put Exadata inside AWS data centers in 2025, joining RDS for Oracle, Oracle on EC2 and migration to Aurora PostgreSQL. How the four compare on licensing, features like RAC and Exadata, operations and cost.
Oct 25, 2026
Four unified data platforms compared: Fabric's single capacity for warehouse, lakehouse and Power BI; SageMaker Unified Studio over Redshift, Athena, EMR, Glue and Bedrock on Iceberg; Databricks; and Snowflake. Pricing models, open formats, BI and who each suits.
Oct 25, 2026
Power BI Pro is $14 a user since April 2025, with free viewers only on Fabric F64 and above. Amazon Quick Sight readers are $3. A worked comparison for 20 authors and 500 viewers, plus where each tool is stronger.
Oct 25, 2026
After Broadcom moved VMware to subscription-only bundles, most VMware customers priced an exit. How Nutanix, Proxmox VE, Hyper-V and Azure Local, Amazon EVS and native EC2 compare on cost model, effort, skills and lock-in.
Oct 25, 2026
Windows workloads on AWS still need Active Directory. AWS Managed Microsoft AD (Standard, Enterprise and the newer Hybrid Edition), self-managed domain controllers on EC2, AD Connector, and Entra Domain Services compared on operations, trusts, limits and when each fits.
Oct 25, 2026
IAM Identity Center is free and should be how people reach AWS; the question is which identity provider sits behind it. Entra ID (P1 now $7 a user a month), Okta and Google Workspace compared on federation, SCIM provisioning, conditional access and cost, plus the built-in directory for small teams.
Oct 25, 2026
Four ways to measure a website or product: Google Analytics 4 (free, 14-month exploration retention, sampling above 10M events), PostHog (1M events a month free, product analytics and replay), Plausible (cookieless, from $9 a month) and your own pipeline on AWS. Cost, privacy, data ownership and who each suits.
Oct 25, 2026
Three ways for an app team to get auth, data, storage, functions and hosting without building a backend from scratch: AWS Amplify Gen 2 (TypeScript on CDK, in your AWS account), Firebase (Google, Firestore and Data Connect) and Supabase (Postgres). Data model, offline support, realtime, pricing shape and lock-in compared.
Oct 25, 2026
Three TypeScript-first ways to build a full-stack app on AWS: Amplify Gen 2 (opinionated backend categories on CDK), SST (an open-source framework on Pulumi and Terraform providers with live Lambda development) and plain AWS CDK. Abstractions, frontend hosting, local development and when each fits.
Oct 25, 2026
Where your ECS tasks should run in 2026 (Fargate, the new ECS Managed Instances, or EC2 capacity you manage) compared on cost, GPUs, instance choice, patching, Spot and operational work.
Oct 25, 2026
How to run nodes on Amazon EKS in 2026 (EKS Auto Mode, Karpenter you run yourself, managed node groups or Fargate) compared on cost, control, upgrades, GPUs and what each leaves you to operate.
Oct 25, 2026
MinIO's community repository was archived in April 2026 and is no longer maintained. Comparing Amazon S3 with self-hosted object storage on Kubernetes (MinIO AIStor, Ceph with Rook, Garage and SeaweedFS) on licensing, operations, durability and cost.
Oct 25, 2026
Choosing a cache in 2026 (ElastiCache or MemoryDB for Valkey, ElastiCache for Redis OSS, Redis Software and Redis Cloud, or Valkey on your own Kubernetes) with the licensing history, the 20–33% Valkey price difference on AWS and the operational trade-offs.
Oct 25, 2026
Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL and Aurora against running PostgreSQL on EKS with the CloudNativePG operator: cost, operations, upgrades, backups, Extended Support charges and when each is the right call.
Oct 25, 2026
Kafka on AWS in 2026 (Amazon MSK with Express brokers and KRaft, Strimzi on EKS, or Confluent Cloud) compared on cost, operations, Kafka 4.x support, scaling and the ZooKeeper-to-KRaft migration.
Oct 25, 2026
Secrets on AWS and Kubernetes in 2026 (AWS Secrets Manager and Parameter Store, HashiCorp Vault under IBM and the BSL, the open-source OpenBao fork, and the External Secrets Operator that connects them) compared on cost, licensing, dynamic secrets and operations.
Oct 25, 2026
Durable workflows on AWS in 2026 (Step Functions Standard and Express, Temporal (self-hosted or Cloud), and Argo Workflows on Kubernetes) compared on programming model, pricing, long-running and agent workflows, and operations.
Oct 25, 2026
Metrics, logs and dashboards on AWS in 2026 (CloudWatch, self-hosted Prometheus and Grafana on Kubernetes, and Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus with Amazon Managed Grafana) compared on cost, Kubernetes fit, OpenTelemetry and operations.
Oct 25, 2026
Queues and pub/sub on AWS (SQS, SNS and EventBridge against RabbitMQ (self-hosted or Amazon MQ) and NATS on Kubernetes) compared on delivery guarantees, routing, latency, cost and what you'd have to run.
Oct 25, 2026
Functions and scale-to-zero services in 2026, AWS Lambda against Knative and OpenFaaS on Kubernetes, compared on cold starts, cost model, limits, portability and the cluster you'd have to run underneath.
Oct 25, 2026
Amazon API Gateway (HTTP and REST APIs) against Kong Gateway and Envoy Gateway on Kubernetes: per-request pricing versus running your own, features, plugins, Gateway API support and when each wins.
Oct 25, 2026
How to ship to AWS in 2026 (AWS CodePipeline, GitHub Actions with OIDC, and GitOps with Argo CD (self-hosted or as an EKS Capability)) compared on cost, security, ECS and EKS fit, and approvals.
Oct 25, 2026
Choosing a coding agent for an engineering team in 2026 (Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, Cursor, GitHub Copilot and Amazon's Kiro) compared on how they work, pricing models, running through your own AWS account with Bedrock, admin controls and where each fits.
Oct 25, 2026
Building AI agents in 2026 (LangGraph, the OpenAI Agents SDK, the Claude Agent SDK, AWS Strands Agents and Google ADK) compared on orchestration model, model support, MCP, state and where they run, including Amazon Bedrock AgentCore.
Oct 25, 2026
Amazon ECS or Amazon EKS in 2026, with ECS Managed Instances, ECS Express Mode, native blue/green and canary deployments, EKS Auto Mode, EKS Capabilities and extended-support pricing. Costs, operational load, features and a decision flow.
Oct 25, 2026
OpenAI models (GPT-5.5, GPT-5.6, the GPT-6 family and Codex) have been generally available on Amazon Bedrock since June 2026. When to call OpenAI directly, when to call the same models through Bedrock, and what changes for data handling, billing, lifecycle and model choice.
Oct 24, 2026
Comparing Langfuse, LangSmith, Arize Phoenix, Braintrust and Helicone for tracing, evaluation and prompt management, with 2026 ownership changes, licensing, self-hosting on AWS and Bedrock AgentCore support.
Oct 24, 2026
LiteLLM, Portkey, OpenRouter, Kong AI Gateway and Amazon Bedrock compared as LLM gateways: routing, keys, budgets and fallbacks, plus the 2026 LiteLLM supply-chain compromises and Portkey's acquisition by Palo Alto Networks.
Oct 24, 2026
Where to keep embeddings for RAG and agents on AWS in 2026: Amazon S3 Vectors, the next-generation OpenSearch Serverless, Aurora PostgreSQL with pgvector, and Pinecone. Scale, latency, search features, idle cost and Bedrock Knowledge Bases support.
Mar 15, 2025
Compare AWS Control Tower with a custom DIY AWS Organizations setup to determine which multi-account governance approach is right for your team.
Feb 28, 2025
A practical comparison of Amazon Athena and Amazon Redshift to help you choose the right AWS query engine for analytics, BI, and data warehouse workloads.
Feb 5, 2025
Compare Karpenter and Cluster Autoscaler for EKS node autoscaling: covering scale speed, cost optimization, spot handling, and when each makes sense.
These guides cover the most common decisions, but every situation has nuance. If you are evaluating a specific AWS architecture decision, we are happy to walk through it with you.