"Fargate is expensive" is half-true. Looking at the price list alone, it is roughly 2× more expensive per vCPU than EC2, but that omits node ops, idle resources, and bin-packing inefficiency. Compare an EC2 cluster averaging 30% node utilization to a Fargate Task running ~100% loaded—results flip. SAP exams drill this precise breakpoint with one to two questions per domain. "Variable traffic, 24/7 ops," "Peak 10× baseline," "GPU inference"—answers branch among EC2, Fargate, Lambda.
This article dissects Fargate's billing structure per second, showing why vCPU-memory combinations form peculiar matrices