What is AWS Elastic Beanstalk used for?

AWS Elastic Beanstalk is an AWS platform-as-a-service that deploys and scales web applications from uploaded code, handling provisioning, load balancing and monitoring. It is a good fit for deploying a web app on AWS without custom infrastructure and moving a Heroku-style workflow to AWS.

Is AWS Elastic Beanstalk free?

Yes. AWS Elastic Beanstalk is free to use. There is no platform fee for Elastic Beanstalk itself; you pay for the AWS resources it provisions, estimated at about $12 a month for a minimal single-instance setup. New accounts get free-tier credits for six months.

Is AWS Elastic Beanstalk open source?

No. AWS Elastic Beanstalk is proprietary (closed-source) software and can't be self-hosted. Open-source alternatives to AWS Elastic Beanstalk include Convox, Coolify and Dokploy.

What are some alternatives to AWS Elastic Beanstalk?

AWS Elastic Beanstalk competes with Heroku, Azure App Service and Google App Engine. For open-source options, see Enlisted's ranked list of open-source AWS Elastic Beanstalk alternatives.

AWS Elastic Beanstalk: features, pricing and alternatives

About AWS Elastic Beanstalk

AWS Elastic Beanstalk is a platform-as-a-service from Amazon Web Services. Developers upload their application code, and the service handles provisioning of the underlying AWS resources and deploying the application onto them, so teams can run web apps without designing the infrastructure from scratch.

It is widely known to support common web application stacks and container deployments, and to manage capacity provisioning, load balancing, scaling and application health monitoring, while still giving developers access to the AWS resources it creates. Check AWS documentation for specifics.

Elastic Beanstalk is a proprietary AWS service with no self-hosted edition. It is generally understood that the service itself carries no extra charge and customers pay for the underlying AWS resources, but confirm this with AWS. It suits teams that want PaaS convenience while staying on AWS.

Key features

Deploy web apps from uploaded code
Automatic infrastructure provisioning
Load balancing and scaling management
Application health monitoring
Access to underlying AWS resources

Good fit for

→Deploying a web app on AWS without custom infrastructure
→Moving a Heroku-style workflow to AWS

Tags: aws; paas; deployment; hosting; autoscaling; cloud; web-apps

AWS Elastic Beanstalk: questions and answers

What is AWS Elastic Beanstalk used for?: AWS Elastic Beanstalk is an AWS platform-as-a-service that deploys and scales web applications from uploaded code, handling provisioning, load balancing and monitoring. It is a good fit for deploying a web app on AWS without custom infrastructure and moving a Heroku-style workflow to AWS.
Is AWS Elastic Beanstalk free?: Yes. AWS Elastic Beanstalk is free to use. There is no platform fee for Elastic Beanstalk itself; you pay for the AWS resources it provisions, estimated at about $12 a month for a minimal single-instance setup. New accounts get free-tier credits for six months.
Is AWS Elastic Beanstalk open source?: No. AWS Elastic Beanstalk is proprietary (closed-source) software and can't be self-hosted. Open-source alternatives to AWS Elastic Beanstalk include Convox, Coolify and Dokploy.
What are some alternatives to AWS Elastic Beanstalk?: AWS Elastic Beanstalk competes with Heroku, Azure App Service and Google App Engine. For open-source options, see Enlisted's ranked list of open-source AWS Elastic Beanstalk alternatives.