faas

OpenFaaS is a platform that lets developers run small, focused pieces of code — called "serverless functions" — on their own servers or cloud infrastructure, without the usual complex setup. "Serverless" doesn't mean there are no servers; it means you don't have to manage them directly. You just write a small function (a task your code performs), and the platform handles everything else: running it, scaling it up when demand spikes, and scaling it back down to zero when it's idle.

This is aimed at developers and engineering teams who want the flexibility of AWS Lambda-style serverless computing but with the ability to run it on their own infrastructure — whether that's a private server, a company data center, or a cloud provider of their choice. It runs on top of Kubernetes, which is the industry-standard system for managing containerized applications at scale.

The big appeal is portability and control. With major cloud providers' serverless offerings, you're locked into their ecosystem. OpenFaaS lets you write functions in any programming language — Python, JavaScript, Go, and many more — package them in a standard container format, and deploy them anywhere Kubernetes runs.

The community (free) edition has some restrictions on commercial use and is more basic than the paid tiers. Commercial teams using it seriously in production would typically purchase a Standard or Enterprise license. There's also a lightweight version called faasd for teams not running Kubernetes.

For founders evaluating serverless infrastructure options or developers building event-driven backends, OpenFaaS is a well-established, widely-adopted open-source option with a paid support tier.