Use Cloud Run or AWS Fargate when one host is not enough

Review by

2027-04-30

How to do it

No open source project runs your containers on someone else's machines, so a paid service is the realistic choice here. Judge it by the five tests and the exit test. AWS Fargate launched on 29 November 2017 and runs containers for Amazon ECS. Cloud Run became generally available on 14 November 2019. In the Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2025, AWS was the most used cloud platform at 43.3%, and Google Cloud third at 24.6%. Both run any standard OCI image that listens on a port, so leaving means pushing the image elsewhere. Build every environment from the same image, as Build every environment from the same code says. Pick the service as Choose the hosting model from written needs describes. The limit for moving on to Kubernetes is in Avoid Kubernetes until Compose and a managed container service fall short. Choose something else when your company already runs on Azure. Azure Container Apps does the same job there.

Examples

Shell example

gcloud run deploy shop --image ghcr.io/example/shop@sha256:0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 --region europe-north1

Terraform example

resource "aws_ecs_service" "shop" {
  name            = "shop"
  cluster         = aws_ecs_cluster.main.id
  task_definition = aws_ecs_task_definition.shop.arn
  launch_type     = "FARGATE"
  desired_count   = 2
}

How to check

The same image digest runs in Compose on a developer machine and on the managed service. The service definition is in the infrastructure code, and no setting is typed into the cloud console.

Sources

• Cloud Run release notes
• AWS Fargate for Amazon ECS

Related rules

• STK-100 Avoid Kubernetes until Compose and a managed container service fall short in Software choices
• INF-11 Build every environment from the same code in Infrastructure and environments
• INF-61 Choose the hosting model from written needs in Infrastructure and environments