What is AWS Step Functions used for?

AWS Step Functions is a serverless workflow orchestration service for coordinating AWS services into state machines. It is a good fit for orchestrating Lambda functions and coordinating data processing pipelines.

Is AWS Step Functions free?

Yes. AWS Step Functions has a free plan. Pay per use. Standard workflows cost $0.000025 per state transition after 4,000 free per month; Express workflows cost $1.00 per million requests plus a per-GB-second duration charge.

Is AWS Step Functions open source?

No. AWS Step Functions is proprietary (closed-source) software and can't be self-hosted. Open-source alternatives to AWS Step Functions include Conductor OSS, Inngest and Dagu.

What are some alternatives to AWS Step Functions?

AWS Step Functions competes with Azure Logic Apps and Microsoft Power Automate. For open-source options, see Enlisted's ranked list of open-source AWS Step Functions alternatives.

AWS Step Functions: features, pricing and alternatives

About AWS Step Functions

AWS Step Functions is a managed service from Amazon Web Services that lets you coordinate multiple AWS services into workflows, defined as state machines. You describe the steps, branching, retries and error handling, and the service runs and tracks each execution for you.

It is serverless, so there are no servers to manage, and it is commonly used to orchestrate Lambda functions, data processing jobs, microservices and machine learning pipelines. As an AWS service it is billed by AWS according to its published pricing and managed through the AWS console, SDKs and templates. Check AWS documentation for current features and limits.

Key features

State machine workflows
Visual workflow design
Built-in retries and error handling
Integration with AWS services
Serverless execution tracking

Good fit for

→Orchestrating Lambda functions
→Coordinating data processing pipelines

Tags: workflow-orchestration; aws; serverless; state-machines; automation; cloud; lambda

AWS Step Functions: questions and answers

What is AWS Step Functions used for?: AWS Step Functions is a serverless workflow orchestration service for coordinating AWS services into state machines. It is a good fit for orchestrating Lambda functions and coordinating data processing pipelines.
Is AWS Step Functions free?: Yes. AWS Step Functions has a free plan. Pay per use. Standard workflows cost $0.000025 per state transition after 4,000 free per month; Express workflows cost $1.00 per million requests plus a per-GB-second duration charge.
Is AWS Step Functions open source?: No. AWS Step Functions is proprietary (closed-source) software and can't be self-hosted. Open-source alternatives to AWS Step Functions include Conductor OSS, Inngest and Dagu.
What are some alternatives to AWS Step Functions?: AWS Step Functions competes with Azure Logic Apps and Microsoft Power Automate. For open-source options, see Enlisted's ranked list of open-source AWS Step Functions alternatives.