BaaS vs Serverless | Learn the differences

Many developers fail to grasp the crucial distinction between serverless and BaaS computing, primarily because there are certain similarities between the same.

For instance, both of these options allow automated backend development without direct intervention from developers. Moreover, many BaaS providers also offer serverless computing alongside it, creating more confusion.

However, you must understand significant operational differences when it comes to BaaS vs serverless. Read on to know more.

What are the differences between BaaS and serverless computing?

Scalability

Scalability is one of the major differences between BaaS and serverless.

For serverless computing, the scale of the app grows automatically depending upon the app usage. The vendor’s infrastructure automatically assigns the necessary servers or containers to initiate this growth.

A BaaS, on the other hand, may or may not scale your app automatically. Several BaaS platforms have a request per second limitation that will prevent automated scaling. There are plenty of BaaS providers that auto-scale apps and they will work like serverless players.

Event-driven apps

The backend process for all serverless computing is divided into specific functions. Each of these functions responds to just one event and performs an action as a reaction to that event. Serverless computing is effective when you want the backend to respond to a specific event. Without these events, the serverless backend does not respond.

The same is not true for BaaS. Backend as a Service is not necessarily an event-driven form of computing, thereby, requiring greater server resources to function. BaaS’s server-side functionalities according to the needs and wants of the developers. With this service, app developers do not need to code the backend, only writing the code for the frontend functionalities.

To know more, please read the article Function as a Service versus BaaS.

FaaS vs BaaS