What is Serverless?
Serverless computing is a cloud execution model where the cloud provider dynamically allocates and manages server resources. You write functions that run in response to events and pay only for the compute time consumed, without managing any server infrastructure.
How Does Serverless Work?
Despite the name, serverless computing still uses servers — you just don't manage them. Instead of provisioning and maintaining servers, you deploy individual functions that the cloud provider runs on demand. Services like AWS Lambda, Google Cloud Functions, and Cloudflare Workers are popular serverless platforms.
Serverless is ideal for event-driven workloads like API endpoints, file processing, and scheduled tasks. It scales automatically from zero to thousands of concurrent executions and you only pay when your code runs. However, it has limitations like cold start latency, execution time limits, and less control over the runtime environment.