AWS Fargate
Serverless compute engine that runs ECS tasks and EKS pods without you managing any EC2 instances.
Verified against AWS documentation · 2026-08-28
Key facts
- 01Launch type for ECS and EKS, not a standalone service — you still define tasks/pods, Fargate just removes the host layer
- 02Task sizes: 0.25 vCPU / 512 MB up to 16 vCPU / 120 GB (Linux); CPU and memory must be a valid pairing
- 03Every task gets its own ENI (awsvpc mode) and its own isolated kernel — no sharing hosts with other tasks
- 0420 GB ephemeral storage included per task, expandable to 200 GB; no GPUs, no privileged containers, no DaemonSets on EKS
Exam triggers
Phrases and scenarios that point here.
- "Run containers without managing servers/clusters/instances" → Fargate
- "Reduce operational overhead" for an ECS or EKS workload → Fargate launch type
- Team doesn't want to patch, scale, or right-size EC2 container hosts → Fargate
- Interrupt-tolerant containers at lowest cost → Fargate Spot (ECS only)
Not this service
- Event-driven code that runs under 15 minutes with no container to manage → Lambda
- Need GPUs, privileged containers, or full control over the host → ECS/EKS on EC2
- The orchestrator itself (services, scheduling, task definitions) → that's ECS or EKS; Fargate is only where they run
Use cases
- 01Small teams running a web API on ECS who'd rather ship features than babysit an EC2 cluster's AMI patching and capacity math
- 02Spiky batch jobs — nightly ETL, report crunching — where paying per-second for exactly what runs beats keeping instances warm
- 03Per-task isolation for multi-tenant or compliance-sensitive workloads, since no two tasks ever share a host kernel
- 04Fargate Spot for CI runners, queue workers, and anything that shrugs off a two-minute interruption notice
- 05EKS pods for teams that want Kubernetes semantics but zero node groups to upgrade or drain
How it's charged
- 01Billed on requested vCPU and memory per second, from image pull start until the task stops — 1-minute minimum (Linux)
- 02You pay for what you request, not what you use — an over-provisioned task definition bills at full size even if the app idles
- 03Ephemeral storage above the included 20 GB is a separate per-GB charge
- 04Windows tasks add an OS license fee per vCPU and carry a 5-minute minimum; no Spot for Windows
- 05Fargate Spot cuts up to ~70% for interruptible ECS tasks; Compute Savings Plans discount vCPU and memory
