I am starting a greenfield project and I'm torn between Azure Functions (Serverless) and AKS (Azure Kubernetes Service). The app will have inconsistent traffic but requires high availability. Which path offers better long-term scalability and easier maintenance for a small team of three developers who aren't experts in orchestration?
3 answers
Given your small team size, I strongly recommend Azure Functions. It is an event-driven, serverless platform that scales automatically without you needing to manage nodes or clusters. You only pay for the execution time, which is perfect for inconsistent traffic. AKS is incredibly powerful but comes with a massive "operational tax"—you’ll need someone to manage the control plane, networking, and security updates. Unless you need deep control over the OS or have complex multi-container dependencies, stay serverless
Does your application have any long-running processes or specific libraries that require a custom container OS?
Azure Functions is definitely easier to maintain. Just watch out for "cold starts" if your app is highly latency-sensitive.
Good point on the cold starts. However, using the Premium Plan can mitigate that while still being easier than managing an AKS cluster.
If you do need containers but want to avoid the complexity of AKS, look at Azure Container Apps. It’s a middle ground that uses KEDA for scaling and is built on Kubernetes, but Microsoft manages the infrastructure for you. It’s perfect for small teams who want the portability of Docker without the headache of managing a full-blown cluster.