Website
 • 
Documentation
 • 
X / Twitter
 • 
Community Slack
 • 
Forum

The Serverless Framework – Makes it easy to use AWS Lambda and other managed cloud services to build applications that auto-scale, cost nothing when idle, and result in radically low maintenance.

The Serverless Framework is a command-line tool with approachable YAML syntax to deploy both your code and cloud infrastructure needed to make tons of serverless application use-cases, like APIs, front-ends, data pipelines and scheduled tasks. It's a multi-language framework that supports Node.js, Typescript, Python, Go, Java, and more. It's also completely extensible via over 1,000 plugins which add more serverless use-cases and workflows to the Framework.

Actively maintained by Serverless Inc.

Serverless Framework - V.4

January 2026 – V.4 continues to feature significant updates. Review them all below. In January 2026 we released support for numerous new features like Managed Instances, Durable Functions, Built-in AppSync & Prune plugins, and built-in AWS Login & SSO support. As always, we are more excited about the serverless future than ever.

New Features In V.4

Here's a list of everything that's new in V.4, so far:

• Managed instances – Native support for EC2-backed Lambda execution to enable higher throughput, predictable capacity, and long-running workloads.
• Durable functions – Built-in support for durable, stateful workflows and long-running orchestrations.
• Lambda tenant isolation mode: Use tenant isolation mode to create distinct Lambda compute environments per tenant to help reduce noisy neighbor effects and isolate high-traffic customers more cleanly.
• HTTP response streaming: Stream logs, long-running reports, partial responses, or AI LLM responses from Lambda with API Gateway HTTP APIs.
• Per-function IAM roles: Add per-function IAM policies or switch the entire service to use per-function policies.
• Built-in plugins: Popular community plugins are now first-class, built-in features of the framework, including Python requirements, AppSync, Prune, API Gateway Service Proxy, and more.
• Improved Custom Domain Support: You no longer need an external plugin to automatically configure custom domains and SSL certificates for your APIs and more. It's now built into the Serverless Framework CLI.
• Integration with Doppler: You can now easily fetch Secrets from Doppler via Serverless Framework Variables.
• Introducing Serverless MCP: Built for Cursor, Windsurf, and other AI-powered IDEs, it auto-detects cloud resources from your code, fetching logs, state, and config from AWS, enabling you to debug serverless apps directly in your IDE — no AWS console visit needed! Supports Serverless Framework, Cloudformation, and more.
• Introducing the Serverless Container Framework: One solution to deploy serverless workloads everywhere - This is a new YAML file that works with the Serverless Framework CLI that gives you one experience to easily deploy containers to AWS Lambda and AWS ECS Fargate and migrate between them w/ zero-downtime — all without re-architecting. We launched this as a way to reduce large Lambda bills and give folks flexibility, but it is rapidly become the greatest developer experience for containers on AWS. Support for Google Cloud Run, Azure and more are coming soon.
• Support for AWS SAM, AWS CloudFormation, & Traditional Serverless Framework Projects: Now, you can use one tool to deploy all three of these IaC project files. More info here
• Native TypeScript Support: You can now use .ts handlers in your AWS Lambda functions in serverless.yml and have them build automatically upon deploy. ESBuild is now included in the Framework which makes this possible. More info here.
• The AWS AI Stack: V.4 is optimized for the AWS AI Stack. Deploy a full-stack, serverless, boilerplate for AI applications on AWS, featuring Bedrock LLMs like Claude 3.5 Sonnet and Llama3.1 and much more.
• New Dev Mode: Run serverless dev to have events from your live architecture routed to your local code, enabling you to make fast changes without deployment. More info here.
• Latest Runtime Support: Support for Node.js 24 (nodejs24.x), Python 3.14 (python3.14), and Java 25 (java25) on AWS Lambda.
• Latest Region Support: Support for all major regions, including the newly announced ap-southeast-6 in New Zealand.
• New Stages Property: Easily organize stage-specific config via stages and set default config to fallback to.
• Improved Compose Experience: Serverless Compose now has a beautiful new CLI experience that better demonstrates what is being deployed.
• New Terraform & Vault Integrations: Pull state outputs from several Terraform state storage solutions, and secrets from Vault. Terraform Docs Vault Docs
• Support Command: Send support requests to our team directly from the CLI, which auto-include contextual info which you can review before sending.
• Debug Summary for AI: When you run into a bug, you can run "serverless support --ai" to generate a concise report detailing your last bug with all necessary context, optimized for pasting into AI tools such as ChatGPT.
• Advanced Logging Controls for AWS Lambda: Capture Logs in JSON, increased log granularity, and setting a custom Log Group. Here is the AWS article. Here is the YAML implementation
• Axiom Integration: Integrate with Axiom's observability solution for a powerful logging, metrics and traces experience, at 3X less than AWS cloudwatch.
• AWS SSO: Environment variables, especially ones set by AWS SSO, are prioritized. The Framework and Dashboard no longer interfere with these.
• Automatic Updates: These happen by default now. Though, you will be able to control the level of updates you're open to.
• Improved Onboarding & Set-Up: The serverless command has been re-written to be more helpful when setting up a new or existing project.
• Updated Custom Resource Handlers: All custom resource handlers now use nodejs20.x.
• Deprecation Of Non-AWS Providers: Deprecation of other cloud providers, in favor of handling this better in our upcoming Serverless Framework "Extensions".

Breaking Changes

We're seeking to avoid breaking changes for the "aws" Provider. However, there are a few large things that are changing to be aware of:

• The V.4 License is changing. See the section below for more information on this.
• Authentication is required within the CLI.
• Non-AWS Providers have been deprecated. We will be introducing new ways in V.4 to use other cloud infrastructure vendors.

If you stumble upon additional breaking changes, please create an issue. To learn more about what's different and potential breaking changes, please see our Upgrading to Serverless Framework V4 Documentation.

License Changes in V.4

Please note, the structure and licensing of the V.4 repository differ from the V.4 npm module. The npm module contains some proprietary licensed software, as V.4 transitions to a common SaaS product, as previously announced. The original Serverless Framework source code and more will continue to remain MIT license software, the repository will soon be restructured to clearly distinguish between proprietary and open-source components.

Contents

• [Features](#features)
• [Quick Start](#quick-start)
• Examples
• Plugins
• [Community](#community)

Features

• Build More, Manage Less: Innovate faster by spending less time on infrastructure management.
• Maximum Versatility: Tackle diverse serverless use cases, from APIs and scheduled tasks to web sockets and data pipelines.
• Automated Deployment: Streamline development with code and infrastructure deployment handled together.
• Local Development: Route events from AWS to your local AWS Lambda code to develop faster without having to deploy every change.
• Ease of Use: Deploy complex applications without deep cloud infrastructure expertise, thanks to simple YAML configuration.
• Language Agnostic: Build in your preferred language – Node.js, Python, Java, Go, C#, Ruby, Swift, Kotlin, PHP, Scala, or F#.
• Complete Lifecycle Management: Develop, deploy, monitor, update, and troubleshoot serverless applications with ease.
• Scalable Organization: Structure large projects and teams efficiently by breaking down large apps into Services to work on individually or together via Serverless Compose.
• Effortless Environments: Seamlessly manage development, staging, and production environments.
• Customization Ready: Extend and modify the Framework's functionality with a rich plugin ecosystem.
• Vibrant Community: Get support and connect with a passionate community of Serverless developers.

Quick Start

Here's how to install the Serverless Framework, set up a project and deploy it to Amazon Web Services on serverless infrastructure like AWS Lambda, AWS DynamoDB, AWS S3 and more.

Install the Serverless Framework via NPM

First, you must have the Node.js runtime installed, version 18.20.3 or greater, then you can install the Serverless Framework via NPM.

Open your CLI and run the command below to install the Serverless Framework globally.

text
npm i serverless -g

Run serverless to verify your installation is working, and show the current version.

Update Serverless Framework

As of version 4, the Serverless Framework automatically updates itself and performs a check to do so every 24 hours.

You can force an update by running this command:

text
serverless update

Or, you can set this environment variable:

text
SERVERLESS_FRAMEWORK_FORCE_UPDATE=true

The serverless Command

The Serverless Framework ships with a serverless command that walks you through getting a project created and deployed onto AWS. It helps with downloading a Template, setting up AWS Credentials, setting up the Serverless Framework Dashboard, and more, while explaining each concept along the way.

This guide will also walk you through getting started with the Serverless Framework, but please note, simply typing the serverless command may be the superior experience.

text
serverless

Create A Service

The primary concept for a project in the Serverless Framework is known as a "Service", and its declared by a serverless.yml file, which contains simplified syntax for deploying cloud infrastructure, such as AWS Lambda functions, infrastructure that triggers those functions with events, and additional infrastructure your AWS Lambda functions may need for various use-cases (e.g. AWS DynamoDB database tables, AWS S3 storage buckets, AWS API Gateways for recieving HTTP requests and forwarding them to AWS Lambda).

A Service can either be an entire application, logic for a specific domain (e.g. "blog", "users", "products"), or a microservice handling one task. You decide how to organize your project. Generally, we recommend starting with a monolithic approach to everything to reduce complexity, until breaking up logic is absolutely necessary.

To create and fully set up a Serverless Framework Service, use the serverless command, which offers an interactive set-up workflow.

text
serverless

This will show you several Templates. Choose one that fits the language and use-case you want.

text
Serverless ϟ Framework
Welcome to Serverless Framework V.4

Create a new project by selecting a Template to generate scaffolding for a specific use-case.

? Select A Template: …
❯ AWS / Node.js / Starter
  AWS / Node.js / HTTP API
  AWS / Node.js / Scheduled Task
  AWS / Node.js / SQS Worker
  AWS / Node.js / Express API
  AWS / Node.js / Express API with DynamoDB
  AWS / Python / Starter
  AWS / Python / HTTP API
  AWS / Python / Scheduled Task
  AWS / Python / SQS Worker
  AWS / Python / Flask API
  AWS / Python / Flask API with DynamoDB
  (Scroll for more)

After selecting a Service Template, its files will be downloaded and you will have the opportunity to give your Service a name.

text
? Name Your Service: ›

Please use only lowercase letters, numbers and hyphens. Also, keep Service names short, since they are added into the name of each cloud resource the Serverless Framework creates, and some cloud resources have character length restrictions in their names.

Learn more about Services and more in the Core Concepts documentation.

Signing In

As of Serverless Framework V.4, if you are using the serverless command to set up a Service, it will eventually ask you to log in.

If you need to log in outside of that, run serverless login.

Logging in will redirect you to the Serverless Framework Dashboard within your browser. After registering or logging in, go back to your CLI and you will be signed in.

Please note, you can get up and running with the Serverless Framework CLI and Dashboard for free, and the CLI will always be free for small orgs and indiehackers. For more information on pricing, check out our pricing page.

Creating An App

The "App" concept is a parent container for one or many "Services" which you can optionally set via the app property in your serverless.yml. Setting an app also enables Serverless Framework Dashboard features for that Service, like tracking your Services and their deployments in Serverless

…

Collapse