What is the difference between serverless and containers?

Both serverless and containers abstract server management, but at different levels: Containers (Docker/Kubernetes): you package your application with its runtime; you manage container orchestration (deployments, scaling, networking); containers run continuously until explicitly stopped; you pay for running containers even when idle; scaling is configurable but manual. Serverless: the cloud provider manages the execution environment; no container orchestration knowledge required; execution is ephemeral — triggered, runs, terminates; pay only for execution time; scales automatically from zero. Middle ground: AWS Lambda supports container images (up to 10GB), letting you deploy Lambda as a Docker image while still benefiting from serverless scaling and billing. AWS Fargate and Google Cloud Run are "serverless containers" — containers that scale to zero and bill per-request like serverless but support longer running times.