Application Auto Scaling
Application Auto Scaling
AWS Application Auto Scaling API auto-scales non-EC2 AWS resources — DynamoDB throughput, ECS service, Aurora replicas, and more.
Unified API across multiple resource types
Does not cover EC2 instances (that's EC2 Auto Scaling)
RegisterScalableTarget for scalable resources (e.g. DynamoDB table); PutScalingPolicy for scaling rules.
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GitHub activity
About this API
Application Auto Scaling is the "non-EC2 part" of AWS's Auto Scaling system. EC2 Auto Scaling is the oldest service, dedicated to EC2 instance count; Application Auto Scaling is a later-launched unified API covering various other resources — same ScalingPolicy abstraction for DynamoDB capacity, ECS service tasks, Aurora read replicas. Each resource has its own "scalable dimension" (e.g. DynamoDB's dynamodb:table:ReadCapacityUnits), but API operations are uniform. Most commonly used when DynamoDB on-demand isn't enough and you want provisioned mode + auto-scaling.
What you can build
- 1DynamoDB auto-scale read/write capacity
- 2ECS service auto-scale tasks by CPU
- 3Aurora read-replica count by load
- 4Dynamically adjust Lambda provisioned concurrency
Strengths & limitations
Strengths
- Unified API across multiple resource types
- Flexible policies based on CloudWatch metrics
- Seamless integration with native service auto-scaling
Limitations
- Does not cover EC2 instances (that's EC2 Auto Scaling)
- Scaling lag (minutes, not seconds)
Getting started
RegisterScalableTarget for scalable resources (e.g. DynamoDB table); PutScalingPolicy for scaling rules.
FAQ
EC2 Auto Scaling vs. Application Auto Scaling?+
EC2 Auto Scaling: EC2 instance counts only. Application Auto Scaling: everything else (DynamoDB, ECS, Aurora, etc.).
Technical details
- Auth type
- unknown
- Pricing
- unknown
- Protocols
- REST
- SDKs
- python, javascript, go, java, csharp
- Response time
- 92 ms
- Last health check
- 6/26/2026, 6:22:15 AM
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