AWS Lambda performance benchmarks and cold start analysis
Real-world performance testing for AWS Lambda packaging formats, runtimes, and deployment strategies.
Container images vs ZIP packages for Lambda cold start performance. Key finding: Container images are 21-36% faster for larger runtimes (5MB+).
- ZIP Package: 42.61ms average init time
- Container Image: 33.51ms average init time
- Improvement: 21% faster cold starts
- Memory allocation - Performance across different memory configurations
- Runtime comparison - Python vs Node.js vs Go vs custom runtimes
- Architecture - x86_64 vs ARM64 performance characteristics
- Cold start scenarios - Various triggers and optimization strategies
- Controlled environments - Identical code across test scenarios
- Statistical significance - 60+ measurements per benchmark
- Real cold starts - No artificial function updates that interfere with caching
- Comprehensive metrics - Average, percentiles, and variance analysis
This research culminated in the definitive guide: Shell Functions as Lambda: The Complete Journey to Sub-25ms Cold Starts
The journey from pure Bash to optimized runtime layers, with complete performance data and architectural insights.
Have ideas for Lambda performance tests? Open an issue or submit a PR with your benchmark scenario.