Explore key concepts of AWS Lambda pricing and the Free Tier with this concise quiz designed to highlight costs, usage limits, and best practices. Perfect for users seeking clarity on function duration, request limits, and optimization strategies related to serverless compute costs.
How many free requests are included per month in the AWS Lambda Free Tier?
Explanation: The correct answer is 1 million, which is the number of free Lambda requests allowed each month under the Free Tier. The other options, such as 10,000 and 500,000, significantly underestimate the included benefit. 5 million exceeds the actual Free Tier offering and might mislead users about available credits.
On what basis is AWS Lambda function duration billed beyond the Free Tier?
Explanation: Lambda bills function duration in increments of 1 millisecond after the Free Tier is exceeded, ensuring users only pay for compute time consumed. Per second and per minute increments would be less precise and could inflate costs. Per 100 milliseconds was a previous model but is no longer used, making per 1 millisecond the most accurate.
If you increase the memory allocated to a Lambda function from 128 MB to 512 MB, how will this affect the price?
Explanation: Allocating more memory to a Lambda function increases the price because cost is based on both memory and duration. Although 'the price doubles' might seem likely, the actual increase is proportional and may not be exactly double depending on usage. 'The price decreases' and 'the price stays the same' are incorrect since higher memory always incurs a higher charge.
What is the maximum monthly compute time included in the AWS Lambda Free Tier?
Explanation: The correct answer is 400,000 GB-seconds, which combines memory allocation and execution time as the Free Tier monthly compute allowance. '500,000 seconds' and '40 hours' refer to time only, not accounting for memory size. '100,000 GB-seconds' underestimates the included free usage.
Which of these Lambda function actions incurs additional charges beyond request and duration costs?
Explanation: Data transfer out from Lambda to the internet is billed separately and is not included in the Free Tier for Lambda pricing. Reading from environment variables, internal variable computation, and logging to standard output do not result in extra charges beyond standard function pricing.
If your Lambda usage stays entirely within Free Tier limits, what happens if you exceed the default concurrent execution limit?
Explanation: When the concurrent execution limit is reached, Lambda throttles additional invocations, even if you are still within Free Tier usage. There are no extra fees for hitting this limit; your function simply won’t process more invocations until resources free up. Automatic scaling still observes concurrency limits, so functions won’t run slower or scale without consideration of these controls.
To minimize Lambda costs, which is a recommended action?
Explanation: Optimizing your function for faster execution will reduce total duration charges, helping lower costs. Increasing memory unnecessarily can increase the bill. Triggering functions more often increases usage and cost. Ignoring timeouts could lead to unnecessarily long executions, raising expenses.
If you exceed Free Tier limits by making 2 million Lambda requests in a month, how are you billed?
Explanation: With 2 million requests in a month, the first 1 million are free and the remaining 1 million incur standard request charges. You are not billed for all 2 million, only for those above the Free Tier limit. 'No charge occurs' and 'all requests after 1,000 are billed' are incorrect as they misstate the free limit.
How does uploading a 6 MB payload to a Lambda function affect pricing compared to uploading a 2 MB payload?
Explanation: Function event payloads cannot exceed 6 MB when invoking via synchronous call, and larger payloads will not be accepted. 'No impact, both are within supported size limits' and 'charges are always highest for any size' are incorrect since not all sizes are supported. 'The 6 MB payload incurs exactly double charges' is also incorrect because the payload hits limits, not pricing structure.
Which event will trigger Lambda billing beyond the Free Tier for a function?
Explanation: Once your function exceeds the monthly Free Tier request limit, further executions trigger standard billing charges. Configuring environment variables, deleting functions, or editing access policies have no impact on billing directly. Only function invocations that go beyond the Free Tier allocation will result in charges.