Azure Functions allows developers to take action by connecting to data sources or messaging solutions thus making it easy to process and react to events. Developers can leverage Azure Functions to build HTTP-based API endpoints accessible by a wide range of applications, mobile and IoT devices.

Netlify is a web development platform that multiplies productivity.

By unifying the elements of the modern decoupled web, from local development to advanced edge logic, Netlify enables a 10x faster path to much more performant, secure, and scalable websites and apps.

Our bet on the Jamstack is quickly coming true. The web is rapidly changing away from monolithic to decoupled apps, and web developers are storming ahead with more power than ever. Netlify is built to cater to that movement, and in just a few years we’ve onboarded more than a million and a half businesses and developers, and are building and serving millions of web projects daily around the globe.

Fun fact: in the time it took you to read the above, Netlify served over 600,000 requests.

Azure Functions consumption plan is billed based on per-second resource consumption and executions. Consumption plan pricing includes a monthly free grant of 1 million requests and 4,00,000 GB-s of resource consumption per month per subscription in pay-as-you-go pricing across all function apps in that subscription. Azure Functions Premium plan provides enhanced performance and is billed on a per second basis based on the number of vCPU-s and GB-s your Premium Functions consume.

Free Plan

Netlify includes:

• 125,000 invocations per month
• 100 hours per month

Paid Plans

The monthly rate of $25USD includes 2M requests and 1k hours

Extra requests: $38 per 1M requests

Extra duration: $38 per 1k hours

Example Pricing:

$25USD per month incl. 2M requests

Azure supports multiple functions concurrently provided operations take place simultaneously within a single data partition. The number of concurrent activity and executions is capped at 10X depending upon the number of cores in the VM level. The execution time limit is 600 seconds or 10 minutes.

Onboarding

Start building a database in production in 5 minutes.

Scalability

Automatically done through serverless technology.

Regions

You can pare with AWS and have the same scope. 

Backups

You can backup through Google Cloud.

Security

Across our global Edge, content deployed to the edge nodes is fully prerendered and static, offering no active processes or surface area for attack.

Application code runs on Netlify's build infrastructure (prior to deployment) and when using cloud functions (in production). Both environments are ephemeral, spinning up new, temporary containers just long enough to execute each task. That means there are no idle environments to attempt to exploit and limited exposure to public networks.

Netlify undergoes a SOC 2 Type 2 audit annually, performed by an independent auditor. (Our enterprise customers can request a full audit report.) Netlify is PCI compliant for all SAQ-A requirements to safely process credit card transactions.

Netlify deploys only to major cloud providers who regularly undergo extensive security audits and certifications.

Netlify leverages globally distributed data center partners that comply with leading security policies and frameworks.

Azure Functions claims to scale 200 instances for a single Node.js function, it fails to do so in practice. When put to test, it was only able to scale 10 function instances concurrently for a single function.

It took a long time for the Azure instances to launch despite 1.5 GB of memory being allocated to them. Median cold start latency was observed at 3640 ms in Azure.

Manage everything in one project

Netlify Functions are files you write in JavaScript, TypeScript, or Go and then place inside your project under the path netlify/functions. (Easy, right? You can even configure that.) Normally, functions are synchronous with a maximum execution time of 10 seconds. But, adding -background to the end of the filename transforms any function into an asynchronous function that can run in the background with up to 15 minutes of runtime.

Build & test locally

You can use Netlify CLI to run a local development server that you can share with others, run a local build and plugins, and deploy your site. The 2.0 version of our Node-based CLI was rebuilt from the ground up to help improve the site-building experience.

Stage, preview, and rollback

Netlify Functions share all of Netlify’s beloved workflow features. Preview every commit with Deploy Preview links. Rollback when needed by simply clicking a prior deployment.

Run A/B testing and phased rollouts

Deploy and test multiple branches, and even control which users see which version. Plan full experiments and rolling upgrades that include both front and backend code changes. A/B test not just a button color, but an entire user workflow.