Amazon EC2 vs AWS CodeBuild
Amazon EC2
aws.amazon.com
AWS CodeBuild
aws.amazon.comSide by side
| Figure | Amazon EC2 | AWS CodeBuild |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | $0.01/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| iOS | Yes | — |
| Android | Yes | — |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 8 | 7 |
| Spec score · Container Build Tools | 9.1 (#2) | 9.4 (#1) |
| Company headquarters | LinkedIn identifies Seattle, Washington as Amazon Web Services headquarters. | Amazon's 2025 SEC filing says its corporate headquarters are in Washington's Puget Sound region and Arlington, Virginia. |
| Company legal name | Crunchbase lists the operating entity as Amazon Web Services, Inc. | Crunchbase lists the maker as Amazon.com, Inc. |
| Company size | LinkedIn displays 146,958 employees associated with the AWS company page. | LinkedIn lists Amazon as a public software-development company with more than 10,001 employees. |
| Documentation depth | AWS publishes separate user, instance-type, Nitro Enclaves, Windows AMI, developer, API, CLI, CloudFormation and VM Import/Export guides for EC2. | AWS publishes a user guide, API reference, CLI reference, SDK references, tutorials, quotas and code examples for CodeBuild. |
| Purpose | Amazon EC2 provides resizable, secure compute capacity as virtual servers in the cloud. | CodeBuild is a fully managed continuous integration service that runs build scripts to compile, test, and package code. |
| Quota limit | EC2 applies per-Region account quotas; exceeding a quota causes the request to fail, although many quotas can be increased through Service Quotas. | The default maximum build timeout is 2,160 minutes, while the minimum is 5 minutes; default concurrency varies by compute type and region. |
| Rating on Capterra | 4.7 out of 5 from 173 reviews | 4.3 out of 5 from 4 reviews |
| Rating on G2 | 4.6 out of 5 from 1,203 reviews | 4.2 out of 5 from 37 reviews |
| Rating on TrustRadius | 8.8 out of 10 from 353 reviews and ratings | 8 out of 10 from 32 reviews and ratings |
| Security | AWS says EC2 security is built on the Nitro System, which offloads virtualization functions to dedicated hardware and isolates customer workloads. | CodeBuild integrates with AWS IAM for granular access controls, and build artifacts are encrypted with AWS KMS managed keys or customer managed keys. |
| Security model | AWS secures the underlying cloud infrastructure while customers remain responsible for network access, credentials, guest operating systems, patches and IAM roles. | AWS documents CodeBuild under a shared-responsibility model with separate guidance for data protection, IAM, compliance, resilience and infrastructure security. |
| What it does | Amazon EC2 provides on-demand, scalable virtual-server capacity in AWS Cloud, allowing customers to increase or decrease capacity as workloads change. | AWS CodeBuild is a fully managed cloud build service that compiles source code, runs unit tests and creates deployable artifacts. |
Plans
Amazon EC2
- AWS Free Tier credits for EC2Free
- Free TierFree
- Spot InstancesFree
- Dedicated HostsPrice not published
- On-Demand InstancesPrice not published
- Reserved InstancesPrice not published
- Savings PlansPrice not published
- Spot InstancesPrice not published
AWS CodeBuild
- AWS CodeBuild pay-as-you-goFree
- AWS Free Tier (on-demand EC2)Free
- Lambda ARM 1GBFree
- general1.medium$0.01 a month
- general1.small$0.01 a month
- general1.large$0.02 a month
- Reserved x86-64 g1.small$129.60 a month
In their own words
Amazon EC2
Amazon EC2 provides resizable, secure compute capacity as virtual servers in the cloud. It offers over 1,000 instance types across Intel, AMD, and Arm processors for workloads including web and enterprise applications, high-performance computing, machine learning, SAP, Windows, and macOS. EC2 Auto Scaling can add or remove instances under dynamic or predictive policies. Instances can use persistent block storage through Amazon EBS and shared file storage through Amazon EFS; the service also provides a Query API and AWS SDKs. AWS says its Nitro System moves virtualization functions to dedicated hardware and isolates customer workloads. EC2 appears in AWS’s compliance program scope, though customers remain responsible for applicable compliance requirements. AWS states a 99.99% availability SLA commitment for each Region. Billing is per instance-hour or per second depending on instance type and operating system; eligible per-second use has a 60-second minimum. New AWS customers can receive up to $200 in credits, and the free plan lasts six months after account creation. The T4g free trial has monthly hour limits and surplus CPU credits can incur charges.
AWS CodeBuild
AWS CodeBuild is a paid, cloud-hosted continuous integration service for compiling, testing, and packaging code from build scripts. It provisions and scales build capacity automatically, so projects do not require users to manage build servers. Preconfigured environments cover Java, Python, Node.js, Ruby, Go, Android, .NET Core for Linux, and Docker; teams can also supply Docker-based environments. A YAML build specification defines commands for each build phase and other settings. Builds can start from CodeCommit, GitHub, GitHub Enterprise, Bitbucket, Amazon S3, or CodePipeline, and can work with Jenkins. Artifacts can be stored in S3 or sent to an artifact repository. IAM provides access controls, while KMS keys encrypt artifacts. Build timing, status, commit ID, metrics, and logs are available through the service and CloudWatch, with SNS event notifications. A free plan provides stated monthly allowances; paid usage starts at 0.01 USD and can add charges for data transfer and related AWS services.