What is the difference between AWS CDK and serverless framework?
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4 min read Feb 9, 2024

What is the difference between AWS CDK and serverless framework?

Finding the proper tool to create an application is the primary concern for different business owners. A wide assortment of tools is available to create the mobile application. Most of the tools that are available to facilitate software development help accomplish a single objective, which includes coding simplification, boosting development speed, and easing the application building process.

Both the serverless framework and AWS CDK are tools that were used for this purpose. Serverless is recognized as the framework that helps create the application, featuring the backend on the cloud. The AWS serverless framework makes it easier to code different event-driven functions for different cloud service providers.

 In addition, the framework happens to be open-source, owing to which it receives updates regularly. AWS is another framework, like the serverless framework, that provides a suitable opportunity for programmers to write less code during serverless application development. Though AWS and the serverless framework come with their own set of functionalities and objectives, they offer their own set of pros and cons.

AWS CDK allows you to define different cloud resources for the serverless app through different programming languages, such as Java, Python, and TypeScript, and deploy the same on AWS Lambda. In this write-up, you can seek information about the difference between an AWS and a serverless framework. Check it out!

Resources definition

AWS CDK allows you to define different infrastructure resources, such as several AIM roles and DynamoDB tables. Thus, you will be able to come up with a basic DynamoDB table within the serverless.yml file. It helps manage the latest DynamoDB features, such as global table creation and autoscaling. Thus, you have to configure the same from the CloudFormation template directly and integrate the external plugin. In addition, the serverless framework creates the CloudWatch Logs group to monitor the deployed serverless function logs within the CloudFormation template.

Cloud Agnosticism

Cloud agnosticism happens to be the primary difference between the serverless framework and the AWS CDK. The serverless framework provides a suitable option to create and deploy different serverless apps for the majority of the cloud platforms, such as Google Cloud Platform, AWS, and Microsoft Azure. CDK, meanwhile, happens to be the serverless IaC tool, which is specific to Amazon Cloud Services.

Extensibility

Both the AWS CDK and the serverless framework provide support for the extensions with the plugins, but the serverless framework comes with its own set of benefits. The serverless framework is equipped with a vast open source plugin library that helps perform the extended functionality, catering to the needs.

Better documentation

The serverless framework happens to be a well-used and mature tool in the AWS CDK. It comes with well-explained and clearer documentation of different aspects of the tool. The serverless framework helps add the AWS Lambda function to the specific serverless.yml file. Since AWS does not have similar examples, you need to check the documentation on your own.

Programming Language Use

AWS CDK adopts a programmatic approach to define different cloud resource provisioning for different AWS serverless functions. Thus, it helps you to use the well-known programming languages, such as Python, TypeScrip to define different resources necessary for the serverless app.Where as Serverless Framework supports to define the cloud resources using YAML.

Can AWS be the replacement for the serverless framework?

Taking into account that AWS CDK is used on AWS, whereas the serverless framework is used on several cloud platforms, it can be said that CDK is not going to be the replacement for the serverless framework.

However, both the AWS CDK and the serverless framework are recognized as outstanding tools to deploy serverless functions. Thus, it depends on preference to determine the ones to be used. CDK provides the flexibility to adopt the programming language to define the application resources. So, you can consider adopting CDK for the AWS Lambda projects. But the serverless framework boasts a huge reputation for different use cases.

AWS has become the latest topic in town for serverless development as it helps manage the data, execute the code, and integrate different apps without server management. Serverless technologies come with pay-for-use billing modes, ready-made high availability, automatic scaling to optimize different costs, and agility. Such technologies remove infrastructure management tasks such as patching and capacity provisioning. So, you will be able to focus on code writing to fulfill customer needs.

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