AWS Lambda for PDF Generation | Generated by AI
Yes, AWS Lambda (or similar serverless functions) is perfect for your use case! This is exactly the scenario serverless computing was designed for - infrequent, sporadic workloads where you don’t want infrastructure sitting idle.
Here’s why Lambda makes sense for your PDF generation:
Cost Benefits:
- You only pay when the function executes (per request + execution time)
- No charges when idle - crucial for your 1-2 times per day usage
- Lambda free tier includes 1M requests/month and 400,000 GB-seconds
- For hundreds of users with low PDF usage, you’ll likely stay within free tier
Technical Approach:
Blog → API Gateway → Lambda Function → PDF Generation → S3 Storage → Return URL
Architecture Options:
- Simple Lambda + Puppeteer/Playwright:
- Lambda function with headless browser to convert HTML to PDF
- Good for styled blog content
- Cold start ~2-3 seconds, but acceptable for your usage
- Lambda + PDF libraries:
- Use libraries like jsPDF, PDFKit, or wkhtmltopdf
- Faster execution, smaller package size
- Better for text-heavy content
- Hybrid approach:
- Lambda generates PDF and stores in S3
- CloudFront for PDF delivery
- Optional: SQS if you want async processing
Alternative Serverless Options:
- Vercel Functions - if your blog is on Vercel
- Netlify Functions - similar concept
- Google Cloud Functions - comparable pricing
- Railway/Render - serverless containers
For your scale (few hundred users, 1-2 PDF requests/day), Lambda would cost you practically nothing while eliminating server maintenance entirely. Much better than keeping a server running 24/7 for occasional PDF generation.
Would you like me to elaborate on any specific implementation approach?