Run a single container or container group without provisioning VMs or orchestration.
Choose Container Instances for simple, isolated container execution — a single container or container group, batch tasks, build agents, or short-lived jobs — where you don't need orchestration, scaling, or load balancing. It starts fast and bills per second.
Avoid Container Instances when you need autoscaling, load balancing, rolling updates, or to run many containers as a service — those need Container Apps or AKS. With no built-in autoscaling or load balancer, it isn't suited to production web traffic on its own.
| Hosting model | Managed containers (no orchestration) |
|---|---|
| Container support | Container-only |
| Minimum nodes | No dedicated nodes |
| State management | Stateless |
| Web hosting | Agnostic |
| Autoscaling | Not supported |
| Load balancer | No built-in support |
| Scale limit | 100 container groups per subscription (default) |
| Multiregion | Single region only |
| Virtual network integration | Supported |
| Hybrid connectivity | Supported |
| GPU support | Not supported |
| TLS | Use a sidecar container |
| Architecture styles | Microservices, task automation, batch jobs |
| Required skills | Container basics |
| Operational overhead | Very low — no orchestration |
| Best for teams | Teams that need simple container execution |
No. Container Instances has no built-in autoscaling or load balancing. For scaling containers, use Container Apps or AKS; ACI is best for single or fixed-count container workloads.
A container group is a set of containers scheduled on the same host that share lifecycle, network, and storage — similar to a Kubernetes pod. It's the deployment unit for Linux in ACI.
Yes. ACI suits task automation and batch jobs — start a container group, run the task, and it stops when complete, billing only for the runtime.
This is one candidate from the Azure compute decision guide. The right choice depends on your full requirements — evaluate scaling, cost, and operational fit before committing.
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