10 Best Serverless Frameworks You Must Know [2025]

Serverless computing has become a disruptive force in the ever-evolving field of technology, completely changing the way applications are created, implemented, and expanded. By 2025, serverless frameworks have come a long way, providing developers with a wide range of effective tools and platforms to help them design applications that are scalable, effective, and affordable.

With its pay-as-you-go concept and abstraction of infrastructure management, the serverless paradigm has gained appeal across a variety of industries, from startups to large corporations, to maximize resource efficiency and spur innovation. As a result of the increased demand for serverless solutions, many frameworks and platforms that meet a variety of use cases and preferences have proliferated within the ecosystem.

What is Serverless Frameworks?

Serverless frameworks are a part of software platforms that enable development, deploying, and managing applications without developers' worries on the management of basic infrastructure. In a serverless architecture, the cloud providers dynamically allocate and provision resources. Consequently, this sets the developer free to invest undivided concentration in the coding of the application instead of servers or infrastructure management. As its name says, "serverless" does not mean without servers; it means the servers are merely abstracted away, making them invisible to the developer.
Applications are decomposed into functions triggered by events in serverless frameworks. These execute only upon invocation, and thus, making way for a pay-as-you-go model where the charge is according to actual usage by developers instead of according to server allocations. This works best for applications with variable or unpredictable traffic, since resources are provisioned on-demand and auto-scale up or down. Other frameworks in this space are well-known tools like AWS SAM, the Serverless Framework, Google Cloud Functions, and Microsoft Azure Functions. All have made it easier to develop and deploy applications on a serverless model on different cloud platforms.

Why Are Serverless Frameworks Important?

Serverless frameworks play a crucial role in modern application development by offering numerous advantages that make application building and management more efficient, cost-effective, and scalable:

1. Cost Efficiency: Serverless frameworks follow a pay-as-you-go model, which means organizations only pay for the compute resources consumed when functions execute. This is particularly beneficial for applications with inconsistent traffic patterns, as there’s no need to pay for idle server time.
2. Scalability: Serverless architectures automatically scale with application demand, handling workloads from a single user to millions seamlessly. Developers don’t need to worry about provisioning or managing server capacity, making it easier to accommodate growth and demand spikes.
3. Reduced Operational Overhead: Serverless frameworks abstract away the complexities of infrastructure management. With automated scaling, load balancing, and fault tolerance, developers can focus on writing code rather than server maintenance, updates, or configuration.
4. Rapid Development and Deployment: Serverless frameworks allow for faster application development and deployment cycles. By using modular functions that execute specific tasks, developers can build, test, and deploy updates more quickly. This is especially advantageous for startups and businesses that prioritize agility and rapid innovation.
5. Event-Driven Architecture: Serverless frameworks support event-driven design, meaning functions are triggered by specific events or actions, like API requests or file uploads. This architecture suits a wide range of applications, from microservices to data processing, IoT applications, and backend services for web and mobile applications.
6. Environmentally Friendly: Because serverless resources are only used as needed, serverless computing can reduce overall resource waste and energy consumption, making it a greener choice for cloud-based computing.
7. Accessibility for Diverse Applications: Serverless frameworks cater to diverse programming languages and environments, providing flexibility for developers to build applications in their preferred languages and styles. Most major serverless frameworks support popular languages like Python, JavaScript, Go, Java, and more, allowing for cross-platform compatibility and custom runtimes.

10 Best Serverless Frameworks You Must Know

From cloud-agnostic solutions to platform-specific offerings, discover the top serverless frameworks that cater to diverse needs and programming languages. Let's dive in and find the perfect fit for your next serverless project!

1. AWS Serverless Application Model (AWS SAM)

Among the AWS serverless frameworks, AWS SAM makes it easier to create serverless apps that integrate with a variety of AWS services. This serverless framework design, which is the official serverless computing and deployment framework from AWS, makes it easier to build, implement, and debug serverless applications within the AWS ecosystem. AWS SAM streamlines serverless development and makes it possible to create reliable event-driven asynchronous jobs and image-based Lambda functions that use Docker.

Key Components:

• Integration with CI/CD workflows that is seamless.
• SAM CLI, which offers an environment for local application development, testing, and debugging that is similar to Lambda and is specified by SAM templates or AWS CDK.
• SAM Accelerate, which helps developers test code modifications in the cloud and avoid local emulation for serverless apps.
• Connects to an array of additional AWS serverless tools.
• It has many helpful built-in SAM CLI commands (common ones include sam init, sam logs, and sam package).
• Integrated security best practices for AWS.

2. Serverless

A serverless application development framework called Serverless Framework aids in the creation, deployment, and scaling of serverless applications. It is the most widely used framework available, and one of its main advantages is that it is generally platform- or cloud-neutral, meaning it can be used with AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and many other clouds. Therefore, it is not heavily dependent on AWS or a vendor lock-in. Because serverless is a general-purpose serverless framework, you should be able to use it with ease when developing web applications, REST APIs, or Internet of Things applications.

Key Components:

• Many technologies, including Node.js, Python, Java, Go, C#, Ruby, Swift, Kotlin, PHP, and Scala, are supported by serverless computing.
• It is a command-line tool designed to manage cloud infrastructure and code for a vast array of serverless use cases. Because it has built-in support for many stages and optimizations, it is fully automated. Additionally, it swiftly uploads the code to AWS Lambda through the use of functions and services.
• It enables extensibility through plugins and Infrastructure as Code (IaC).
• A consolidated view of the infrastructure, performance, logs, faults, etc. through the dashboard.

3. AWS Chalice

Chalice has just recently entered the market. It frequently has a strong emphasis on providing web and REST APIs. AWS Chalice is a framework for creating serverless applications in Python and is a project for Python enthusiasts. Chalice automatically creates deployment pipelines made with AWS CodePipeline and AWS CodeBuild, so creating CI/CD pipelines is very simple.

Key Components:

• It offers command-line tools for structuring the creation and management of Flask applications with business logic.
• Similar to Zappa, it automatically activates the identity and access management (IAM) approach for authentication.
• It enhances the API's integration with Amazon S3 and Amazon API Gateway.

4. Terraform

Terraform is an automation scripting tool that is comparable to AWS CloudFormation and is commonly referred to as an IaC service. It is employed in the development, deployment, and management of cloud infrastructure for various cloud service providers. A well-liked infrastructure-as-code (IaC) tool that helps with serverless architecture definition and provisioning on several cloud providers, such as AWS, Azure, and GCP.

Key Components:

• It is included in an extensive community for an open-source tool.
• It has functionalities like graphing and transparent planning, among others.
• It Automates infrastructure deployments and serverless application resource provisioning.
• It handles and makes preparations for infrastructure in a safe and effective manner throughout its existence.
• Oversees both high-level and low-level components, including DNS records, storage, computing, and networking resources (SaaS features) and it enables you to make templates that divide setups into manageable, more manageable portions.

5. Zappa

Zappa is a well-liked framework that served as both the model and the pioneer for many other serverless frameworks. It has multiple applications. Zappa is a popular choice for web-based applications and REST API-like solutions. Its main advantage is that it focuses on Python solutions. If you have a WSGI (web server gateway interface)-based application, such as Flask or Django, and you want to convert it to serverless capabilities like AWS Lambda and AWS API gateway, Zappa is the right choice.

Key Components:

• It will offer a fantastic abstraction for re-platforming applications that depend on components such as Flask applications.
• For instance, using Zappa with an already-existing Flask application allows you to use AWS Lambda and API gateway with minimal code modification because of the abstraction it provides.
• Zappa offers increased security because it by default activates the identity and access management (IAM) approach for authentication.
• Zappa accepts asynchronous task answers using DynamoDB as the backend.

6. Jets

For Ruby developers, Jets is the best serverless framework, making it simple to create and launch apps using AWS services. It gives developers all the tools they need to deploy the AWS Lambda framework and create a variety of architecture patterns, such as web API apps and Internet of Things architecture.

Key Components:

• Pay attention to Ruby, a dynamic language.
• A wealth of technical documentation that includes several instances.
• More time to devote to developing useful code.
• Support for creating distinct functions that can be used to connect various AWS services and resources.

7. AWS Cloud Development Kit (CDK)

Another one from the AWS tool stash, AWS CDK could be a program advancement system where you characterize your cloud foundation utilizing cutting edge programming dialects and deploy it using AWS CloudFormation. In this way, CDK may be a great fit in the event that you need to construct serverless architectures on AWS employing a dialect commonplace to your designers. It allows the making of web apps, microservices, serverless utility capacities, containerized applications, and more.

Key Components:

• It has a CLI that is easy for developers to use.
• You can use one programming language to write code and set up AWS resources at the same time. This makes it possible to deploy both code and infrastructure together.
• Helps you involve more developers in DevOps by using Infrastructure as Code.
• Connects with the AWS CDK CLI for smooth delivery pipelines.

8. Architect

The architect framework is strong, clever, and modern for making fast and efficient cloud-based apps. It allows developers to describe how to use serverless architecture in a simple and short way, with little code and no complicated settings. They can only focus on the business side. Also, you only have to pay for the services you use when you need them, or until it reaches zero.

Key Components:

• Open administration and open source.
• Versatile Code for Foundation.
• Licenses code seeing, testing, investigating, and improvement both locally and offline earlier to sending.
• Secured (IAM parts) with the least benefit get to fair the desired assets.

9. Flogo

Flogo is the tool to use when developing serverless applications with Docker. It is an open-source environment with managed content that makes it easy to build modern serverless applications. It is a Golang script that allows you to easily develop, deploy, and maintain applications on AWS Lambda using only Docker images.

Key Components:

• Very simple design; 20-50 times faster than Java or Node.js. js.
• Provides a user interface (UI) framework for designing applications with Golang.
• The framework provides a lightning-fast way to run your code.
• Static binaries provide the freedom to distribute software to IoT edge devices such as serverless applications or containers.

10. Claudia.js

By using Claudia.js, developers can automate deployment procedures and configuration by deploying Node applications into AWS Lambda and API Gateway with the use of minimal code. This open-source tool allows for the quick creation of event-driven applications and auto-scaling web APIs, utilizing serverless backend functions and client-side code.

Key Components:

• Claudia.js works with the NPM Package.
• It helps in automating the deployment and configuration of the node application easily.
• It also allows to use of plugins with extension libraries in developing applications.
• It also helps easy version management and it also contains a lightweight javascript framework.

Comparison table of serverless frameworks

Conclusion

Serverless frameworks empower developers to streamline application development and deployment by offering a robust abstraction layer over server management. This translates to faster time-to-market, reduced costs, and the ability to focus on core functionalities. As serverless technology matures, expect advancements that further simplify solutions, optimize costs, and unlock greater value for developers. For building secure applications, AWS services like Identity and Access Management (IAM) can safeguard sensitive data and ensure compliance.