Web Development
What is serverless?
Quick answer
Serverless is a way of running code in the cloud without managing any servers yourself. The provider runs your code when it's needed, scales it up or down automatically, and charges only for what's actually used. There are still servers; you just don't have to provision or maintain them.
In a serverless model you deploy small functions, as with AWS Lambda, Vercel, or Cloudflare Workers, that run in response to events like an API request. If nobody uses a function you pay nothing, and if thousands do it scales automatically. This removes a lot of operations work and can cut costs for variable or spiky traffic.
The trade-offs include "cold starts", a brief delay when a function hasn't run recently, and less control over the environment. Serverless suits APIs, background jobs, and modern web apps well, while steady, heavy, always-on workloads can sometimes be cheaper on traditional servers.
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