App Server
A managed application-hosting platform — it runs your web app or API code and handles the servers, load balancing, scaling, and patching underneath, so you deploy code instead of provisioning infrastructure.
Description
The managed application platforms (AWS Elastic Beanstalk and App Runner, Azure App Service, GCP App Engine and Cloud Run) all run web apps and APIs without you provisioning servers, handling deployment, scaling, load balancing, and patching. The differences are in how much of the stack they expose and their runtime model: Elastic Beanstalk provisions and still surfaces the underlying EC2, load balancer, and auto-scaling group, while App Runner and Cloud Run are container-first and fully managed with scale-to-zero; Azure App Service is a broad managed host for web apps, APIs, and background jobs across common runtimes; GCP App Engine offers Standard and Flexible environments that trade control for simplicity. To the best of our knowledge the core role is equivalent; choose by whether you deploy code or containers, how much infrastructure you want exposed, and your existing cloud ecosystem.
Capabilities
- Deploy web apps and APIs without managing servers
- Automatic scaling and load balancing
- Health checks, rolling deploys, and managed patching
- Runtime support for common languages and containers