"Serverless" just means you stop managing servers yourself: you push code, the platform runs it only when needed, and you're billed for actual usage instead of an idle machine sitting around 24/7. It's a good fit for APIs with spiky traffic, background jobs, and small teams who don't want to babysit infrastructure. But "serverless" now covers a lot of very different tools — from frameworks that deploy your existing app to AWS Lambda, to fully self-hosted alternatives, to platforms built specifically for long-running background jobs. Here are 9 real ones from our catalog, grouped by what they actually do.
The short version
| Tool | Category | Best for | Pricing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bref | PHP on Lambda | PHP teams wanting Lambda without rewriting | Free (AWS usage costs apply) |
| Apache OpenWhisk | Open-source FaaS | Teams wanting a vendor-neutral, self-hostable base | Free, open source |
| Serverless Framework | Multi-cloud IaC | Teams deploying functions across AWS/Azure with one tool | Free core, paid add-ons |
| Laravel Vapor | Laravel on Lambda | Laravel shops wanting fixed pricing on AWS | Paid, flat fee + separate AWS costs |
| OpenWorkers | Edge workers (beta) | JS/TS teams testing a Cloudflare Workers alternative | Beta, pricing not public |
| Cygnus | Self-hosted FaaS | Teams wanting Lambda-style functions on their own servers | Free, open source (AGPL-3.0) |
| Kedge | Forkable app hosting | Small teams wanting instant preview environments | ~$15/vCPU-mo + usage, free credits tier |
| Inngest | Durable background jobs | Adding retryable jobs to an existing app fast | Free Hobby, Pro $99/mo |
| Trigger.dev | Durable background jobs | Long-running jobs and AI-agent workflows, self-hostable | Free credits, Hobby $10/mo, Pro $50/mo |
Framework-first: deploy your existing app as serverless
These four tools take an app you already write in a familiar way (PHP, or any language via IaC) and package it to run on AWS Lambda or another cloud's functions.
Bref lets PHP teams run standard PHP applications on AWS Lambda without a rewrite. It's free to use, though AWS itself still bills for compute. Strengths: real cost savings versus a always-on server, and simple deployment once set up. Limits: it needs real AWS/Lambda familiarity, and it's a niche tool compared to mainstream PHP hosting.
Apache OpenWhisk is the open-source, vendor-neutral option — a serverless platform you can self-host instead of committing to one cloud's proprietary functions product. Strengths: fully open source, no server management once deployed, solid documentation. Limits: a steep learning curve and a smaller, less active community than AWS Lambda or Google Cloud Functions.
Serverless Framework is the closest thing to an industry-standard way to define and deploy functions across AWS, Azure and other providers from one config file. Strengths: open source, large active community, flexible multi-cloud deployment. Limits: a real learning curve, and cloud costs can surprise you if you're not watching usage.
Laravel Vapor is the official-adjacent way to run Laravel apps serverlessly on AWS, with autoscaling and zero-downtime deploys baked in. Strengths: predictable flat pricing for the platform itself, free renewable SSL, full control over the underlying AWS costs. Limits: AWS usage is billed separately on top, and it can be a lot for beginners to configure correctly.
Newer and self-hosted alternatives to Lambda / Vercel Functions
If you don't want to depend on AWS Lambda, Vercel or Cloudflare Workers directly, these three are smaller, newer entrants aiming at the same job.
OpenWorkers runs TypeScript/JavaScript workers for HTTP requests, scheduled jobs and workflows — positioned as an alternative to Cloudflare Workers or Vercel Edge Functions. Strengths: simple deployment, automatic scaling, built-in monitoring. Limits: still in open beta with no public pricing, and there's no public data yet on edge coverage or latency versus the established players.
Cygnus is a genuinely self-hosted alternative to AWS Lambda or Vercel Functions: you run your own serverless platform on your own servers, with no container registry or YAML to wrangle. Strengths: sub-100ms cold starts via kernel-level sandboxing instead of containers, true scale-to-zero, and three deploy modes (dashboard, Git push, CLI) with PR previews. Limits: it's a young project with a small community, and its AGPL-3.0 license carries real obligations if you modify it and expose it as a commercial SaaS.
Kedge takes a slightly different angle: each app runs in its own tiny VM that can be instantly forked, so spinning up a preview environment for a teammate or testing a risky change takes seconds. Strengths: instant VM forking for previews, built-in global SQLite, true scale-to-zero, automatic per-PR preview environments. Limits: it's young with no large-scale reliability track record yet, and it's not as "zero-ops" simple as pure serverless like Vercel or Cloudflare Workers.
Background jobs & durable workflows
These two aren't request/response serverless — they solve a related but different problem: making sure long-running or multi-step background work actually finishes, retries on failure, and doesn't silently break.
Inngest is the lowest-friction way to add durable, retryable steps to an app you already have — you keep writing normal functions in TypeScript, Python or Go, and it adds automatic retries, idempotency and flow control (concurrency, throttling, rate limits). It's proven in production at companies like Replit and ElevenLabs. Limits: the server itself is source-available (SSPL) rather than fully open source, and hosted pricing can climb at high execution volume.
Trigger.dev is built for jobs that genuinely run long or behave like AI agents: no timeouts, real-time task streaming to your frontend, and it's fully open source (Apache 2.0) and self-hostable. Limits: it's more of a platform to deploy to than a drop-in SDK, so there's a bit more setup, and its per-second compute pricing is harder to predict than a flat plan. If you're choosing between the two, we cover that head-to-head separately.
Which one should you actually pick?
If you're deploying an existing PHP or Laravel app, Bref or Laravel Vapor are the direct paths. For a multi-cloud, framework-agnostic setup, Serverless Framework or the fully open-source Apache OpenWhisk make sense. If you specifically want to avoid AWS/Vercel/Cloudflare lock-in and self-host, look at Cygnus (pure functions) or Kedge (forkable VMs with previews) — both are young, so pilot before betting production on them, same for the beta OpenWorkers. And if your actual problem is background jobs or agent workflows rather than request handling, Inngest or Trigger.dev solve that more directly than any generic FaaS platform.