Alternative to Azure Container Instances
LayerOps vs Azure Container Instances
Azure Container Instances offers quick container execution, but lacks orchestration, load balancing and multi-cloud. LayerOps gives you a complete platform — without Azure lock-in.
Why teams move away from Azure ACI
Azure lock-in
ACI ties your workloads to a single US-owned provider. LayerOps lets you deploy across European clouds — OVHcloud, Scaleway, Exoscale — and switch providers without rewriting anything.
No built-in load balancing
ACI doesn't include a load balancer. You need Azure Application Gateway or Front Door — extra cost, extra configuration. LayerOps includes HTTP/2 load balancers with automatic SSL certificates.
No real autoscaling
ACI has no native autoscaling — you need Azure Functions or Logic Apps to script container group scaling. LayerOps autoscales both services and infrastructure automatically across providers.
No multi-cloud
ACI runs only on Azure. If Azure goes down, your services go down. LayerOps distributes workloads across multiple European clouds for true resilience.
Monitoring requires add-ons
ACI monitoring requires Azure Monitor and Log Analytics — extra setup and cost. LayerOps provides full Grafana dashboards, custom alerts and cost analytics out of the box.
Complex networking
ACI requires VNet integration for private networking, NSG rules and DNS configuration. LayerOps handles networking automatically — private service communication works out of the box.
| Azure ACI | LayerOps | |
|---|---|---|
| InfrastructureMulti-cloud deployment | ✗ — Azure only | Native — any provider, single pane |
| Hybrid cloud (cloud + bare-metal) | Native — mix any infrastructure | |
| Bring Your Own Cloud (BYOC) | N/A | ✓ — deploy to your own accounts |
| Data sovereignty | Azure regions (US-owned) | EU providers of your choice |
| OrchestrationDocker image deployment | ||
| Git-based deployments | ✗ (needs Azure DevOps / GitHub Actions) | Built-in Git integration |
| Auto-scaling (services) | ✗ (requires scripting) | Built-in, per-service |
| Auto-scaling (instances) | Built-in, cross-provider | |
| Load Balancer with SSL | Application Gateway (extra cost) | Built-in HTTP/2 LB + auto SSL |
| Custom domains | Manual (Azure DNS + App Gateway) | One-click domain mapping |
| Rolling updates | Manual (redeploy container group) | Automatic zero-downtime deploys |
| Monitoring & SecurityMonitoring dashboards | Azure Monitor (extra setup) | Full Grafana dashboards |
| Alerting | Azure Alerts (extra config) | Built-in custom alerts |
| Cost analytics | Azure Cost Management | Built-in per-environment analytics |
| RBAC | Azure AD (complex IAM) | Simple environment-level RBAC |
| SSH access to services | az container exec (limited) | Temporary authorized SSH |
| OperationsGPU workloads | Limited GPU SKUs | Native GPU auto-provisioning |
| API / CI-CD integration | Azure REST API | Full REST API + YAML CI/CD |
| Pricing | Per-second billing (unpredictable) | From €49/mo — predictable |
When Azure ACI is the right choice
Azure Container Instances works well for short-lived tasks — batch jobs, CI runners, or quick prototypes that don't need orchestration. If you're already deep in the Azure ecosystem and only need ephemeral containers, ACI does the job.
But when you need production-grade orchestration — multi-cloud, autoscaling, load balancing, monitoring, RBAC — that's where LayerOps takes over. See also how we compare to Kubernetes, AWS Fargate and Portainer.
Need to deploy on your own infrastructure? Discover LayerOps On-Premise — self-hosted, white-label, air-gap compatible.
Ready to break free from Azure lock-in?
Deploy your services across any European cloud provider in minutes — with built-in load balancing, autoscaling and monitoring.