The Cost of Scaling: Moving from Serverless to Elixir

2023/09/05

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In a recent article, the author shares their experience of moving a service from AWS API Gateway and Lambda to Elixir. The original service was designed to collect an event stream from web browsers and ingest them into an ETL system. However, as the service scaled, the costs associated with API Gateway became exorbitant. The author explains that API Gateway alone costs $3.50 per million HTTP requests, and with their service handling 5,000,000 requests per hour, the bill for API Gateway alone reached $12,600. To address this issue, the author decided to rewrite the service in Elixir. They highlight that Elixir is a cost-effective alternative and provides better control over data storage and processing. The article serves as a cautionary tale about the potential expenses of scaling with serverless solutions and showcases the benefits of using Elixir for high-performance applications.