When to use Fargate

We recommend using Fargate in most scenarios. Fargate launches and scales the compute to closely match the resource requirements that you specify for the container. With Fargate, you don't need to over-provision or pay for additional servers. You also don't need to worry about the specifics of infrastructure-related parameters such as instance type. When the compute environment needs to be scaled up, jobs that run on Fargate resources can get started more quickly. Typically, it takes a few minutes to spin up a new Amazon EC2 instance. However, jobs that run on Fargate can be provisioned in about 30 seconds. The exact time required depends on several factors, including container image size and number of jobs.

However, we recommend that you use Amazon EC2 if your jobs require any of the following:

If you have a large number of jobs, we recommend that you use Amazon EC2 infrastructure. For example, if the number of concurrently running jobs exceeds the Fargate throttling limits. This is because, with EC2, jobs can be dispatched at a higher rate to EC2 resources than to Fargate resources. Moreover, more jobs can run concurrently when you use EC2. For more information, see Fargate service quotas in the Amazon Elastic Container Service Developer Guide.