Your .NET Worker Service Is Slower and More Expensive Than AWS Lambda!

A comparison of .NET Worker Services polling SQS queues versus using AWS Lambda as an event-driven SQS consumer. The worker service approach runs 24/7 incurring constant costs even when idle, while Lambda only runs and charges when messages arrive. Lambda also auto-scales by spinning up multiple concurrent execution environments under load, something containers can do but with slower cold starts. The code comparison shows Lambda requires significantly less boilerplate by eliminating polling logic, and its SQS batch response simplifies failure handling. Lambda is presented as the purpose-built, cost-effective solution for reactive message processing workloads.