Integrating services with Step Functions - AWS Step Functions
Call other AWS servicesIntegration pattern support

Integrating services with Step Functions

Learn how to call third-party APIs and integrate other AWS services with AWS Step Functions.

Call other AWS services

With AWS service integrations, you can call API actions and coordinate executions directly from your workflow. You can use Step Functions' AWS SDK integrations to call any of the over two hundred AWS services directly from your state machine, giving you access to over nine thousand API actions. Or you can use Step Functions' Optimized integrations, each of which has been customized to provide special functionality for your workflow. Some API actions are available in both types of integration. When possible, we recommend using the Optimized integration.

You coordinate these services directly from a Task state in the Amazon States Language. For example, using Step Functions, you can call other services to:

  • Invoke an AWS Lambda function.

  • Run an AWS Batch job and then perform different actions based on the results.

  • Insert or get an item from Amazon DynamoDB.

  • Run an Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) task and wait for it to complete.

  • Publish to a topic in Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS).

  • Send a message in Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS).

  • Manage a job for AWS Glue or Amazon SageMaker.

  • Build workflows for executing Amazon EMR jobs.

  • Launch an AWS Step Functions workflow execution.

AWS SDK integrations

AWS SDK integrations work exactly like a standard API call using the AWS SDK. They provide the ability to call over nine thousand APIs across the more than two hundred AWS services directly from your state machine definition.

Optimized integrations

Optimized integrations have been customized by Step Functions to provide special functionality for a workflow context. For example, Lambda Invoke converts its API output from an escaped JSON to a JSON object. AWS BatchSubmitJob lets you pause execution until the job is complete.

For the full list of optimized integrations, see Integrating optimized services with Step Functions

Cross-account access

Step Functions provides cross-account access to resources configured in different AWS accounts in your workflows. Using Step Functions service integrations, you can invoke any cross-account AWS resource even if that AWS service does not support resource-based policies or cross-account calls.

For more information, see Accessing resources in other AWS accounts in Step Functions.

Integration pattern support

Standard Workflows and Express Workflows support the same integrations but not the same integration patterns.

  • Standard Workflows support Request Response integrations. Certain services support Run a Job (.sync), or Wait for Callback (.waitForTaskToken) , and both in some cases. See the following optimized integrations table for details.

  • Express Workflows only support Request Response integrations.

To help decide between the two types, see Choosing workflow type in Step Functions.

AWS SDK integrations in Step Functions

Integrated service Request Response Run a Job - .sync Wait for Callback - .waitForTaskToken
Over two hundred services Standard & Express Not supported Standard

Optimized integrations in Step Functions

Integrated service Request Response Run a Job - .sync Wait for Callback - .waitForTaskToken
Amazon API Gateway Standard & Express Not supported Standard
Amazon Athena Standard & Express Standard Not supported
AWS Batch Standard & Express Standard Not supported
Amazon Bedrock Standard & Express Standard Standard
AWS CodeBuild Standard & Express Standard Not supported
Amazon DynamoDB Standard & Express Not supported Not supported
Amazon ECS/Fargate Standard & Express Standard Standard
Amazon EKS Standard & Express Standard Standard
Amazon EMR Standard & Express Standard Not supported
Amazon EMR on EKS Standard & Express Standard Not supported
Amazon EMR Serverless Standard & Express Standard Not supported
Amazon EventBridge Standard & Express Not supported Standard
AWS Glue Standard & Express Standard Not supported
AWS Glue DataBrew Standard & Express Standard Not supported
AWS Lambda Standard & Express Not supported Standard
AWS Elemental MediaConvert Standard & Express Standard Not supported
Amazon SageMaker Standard & Express Standard Not supported
Amazon SNS Standard & Express Not supported Standard
Amazon SQS Standard & Express Not supported Standard
AWS Step Functions Standard & Express Standard Standard