Demystifying Serverless Costs on Public Platforms: Bridging Billing, Architecture, and OS Scheduling
Changyuan Lin, Yuanzhi Ma, Mohammad Shahrad · 2026
Public cloud serverless platforms have attracted a large user base due to their high scalability, plug-and-play deployment model, and pay-per-use billing. However, compared to virtual machines and container hosting services, modern serverless offerings typically impose higher per-unit time and resource charges. Additionally, billing practices such as wall-clock time allocation-based billing, invocation fees, and usage rounding up can further increase costs.