AWS Service Comparisons
Organize AWS services that are easily confused on certification exams by use case, exam points, and practical differentiators. Built to help you decide which service to choose in which situation, not just memorize names.
Start with these comparisons if you are new to AWS.
Published:13 articles
Networking
Organizes the differences between Application Load Balancer, Network Load Balancer, and Amazon CloudFront — easily-confused AWS traffic entry points — along with exam-relevant points and how to use each in practice.
Networking
Organizes the differences between Amazon API Gateway, Application Load Balancer, and Amazon CloudFront — AWS entry points for APIs and web applications — across serverless, load balancing, CDN, and exam-relevant points.
AI / Machine Learning
Organizes the differences between Amazon Bedrock and Amazon SageMaker — AWS generative AI and machine learning services — along with exam-relevant points and how to use each in practice.
Compare AWS services in the Networking category that are easily confused.
Organizes the differences between Application Load Balancer, Network Load Balancer, and Amazon CloudFront — easily-confused AWS traffic entry points — along with exam-relevant points and how to use each in practice.
Services covered
Organizes the differences between Amazon API Gateway, Application Load Balancer, and Amazon CloudFront — AWS entry points for APIs and web applications — across serverless, load balancing, CDN, and exam-relevant points.
Services covered
Organizes the differences between NAT Gateway, NAT instances, and VPC endpoints — services that are easy to confuse when designing traffic paths out of a private subnet — covering purpose, pricing, availability, and when to use gateway versus interface endpoints.
Services covered
Organizes the differences between Amazon Route 53, Amazon CloudFront, and AWS Global Accelerator — all 'global' services and easily confused — along with exam-relevant points and how to use each in practice.
Services covered
Compare AWS services in the AI / Machine Learning category that are easily confused.
Organizes the differences between Amazon Bedrock and Amazon SageMaker — AWS generative AI and machine learning services — along with exam-relevant points and how to use each in practice.
Services covered
Compare AWS services in the Monitoring category that are easily confused.
Organizes the differences between Amazon CloudWatch, AWS CloudTrail, and AWS Config — central to AWS operational monitoring — along with exam-relevant points and how to use each in practice.
Services covered
Compare AWS services in the Security category that are easily confused.
Organizes the differences between IAM users, IAM roles, and IAM policies — central to AWS permission management — along with exam-relevant points and how to use each in practice.
Services covered
Organizes the differences between Security Groups and Network ACLs in Amazon VPC — easily confused — across scope, stateful vs. stateless behavior, allow and deny rules, and exam-relevant points.
Services covered
Organizes the differences between AWS Secrets Manager and AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store — for managing configuration values and secrets — across purpose, encryption, automatic rotation, cost, and exam-relevant points.
Services covered
Compare AWS services in the Database category that are easily confused.
Organizes the differences between Amazon RDS and Amazon DynamoDB — representative AWS database services — along with exam-relevant points and how to use each in practice.
Organizes the differences between Amazon RDS Multi-AZ deployments and Read Replicas — easily confused — across availability, read performance, failover, and exam-relevant points.
Services covered
Compare AWS services in the Storage category that are easily confused.
Organizes the differences between Amazon S3, Amazon EBS, and Amazon EFS — representative AWS storage services — along with exam-relevant points and how to use each in practice.
Compare AWS services in the Integration category that are easily confused.
Organizes the differences between Amazon SNS, Amazon SQS, and Amazon EventBridge — AWS application integration services — along with exam-relevant points and how to use each in practice.
Services covered
Start by reviewing each AWS service in the glossary.
Organize the differences between similar services by use case, exam points, and design perspective.
Finally, solve practice questions to confirm how to choose between services.