Level: 300–400 | Reading time: ~10 minutes
Recently, a customer asked me when they should choose Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow (Amazon MWAA) versus AWS Step Functions. I walked them through their use cases, pointed them to the recently published AWS comparison blog, and mentioned AWS Lambda durable functions as something worth considering for their new data platform.
That made me realise how many teams are asking the same question. The AWS blog covers MWAA and Step Functions well. It references Lambda durable functions at the end, pointing readers to the documentation for more detail. This post expands that comparison by bringing Lambda durable functions into the picture.
In this post, you will learn how Lambda durable functions, Step Functions, and MWAA differ in developer experience and architectural fit. You get five real scenarios, the same workflow implemented three ways, and a decision framework you can apply to your own workloads.
Prerequisites
