AWS Copilot

Beginner Friendly

The simplest way to deploy containers to AWS

💵 Cost Warning: Copilot creates real AWS resources that incur charges. A typical deployment costs $30-50/month: ALB (~$16/mo), Fargate (~$15/mo), NAT Gateway (~$32/mo if using private subnets). Use copilot svc pause to scale to zero when not needed, or copilot app delete to remove everything. See our Costs & Cleanup Guide.

What is AWS Copilot?

AWS Copilot is a CLI tool that simplifies deploying containerized applications to AWS. It abstracts away the complexity of ECS, VPC, ALB, and IAM configuration into simple commands and YAML manifests.

Best for Getting Started

Copilot is perfect if you want to deploy quickly without learning CloudFormation, Terraform, or the intricacies of ECS networking. It makes opinionated choices that work well for most applications.

Copilot Architecture

Plain Text

Application: "my-app"
├── Environment: "staging"
│   ├── VPC with public/private subnets
│   ├── ECS Cluster
│   ├── Application Load Balancer
│   └── Services:
│       ├── frontend (Load Balanced Web Service)
│       └── worker (Worker Service)
│
└── Environment: "production"
    ├── VPC with public/private subnets
    ├── ECS Cluster
    ├── Application Load Balancer
    └── Services:
        ├── frontend
        └── worker

Service Types

Type	Use Case	Features
Load Balanced Web Service	Web apps, APIs	ALB, HTTPS, autoscaling
Backend Service	Internal APIs	Service discovery, no public access
Worker Service	Background jobs	SQS queue processing
Scheduled Job	Cron tasks	EventBridge scheduled execution

Deployment Workflow

Initialize Application

Create a Copilot application that groups all your services and environments.

Create Environment

Set up a deployment environment (staging, production) with VPC and networking.

Initialize Service

Configure your container service with the appropriate type and settings.

Deploy

Build your container, push to ECR, and deploy to ECS Fargate.

Step 1: Initialize Application

Terminal

$copilot app init my-app

✔ Created directory copilot/ for application my-app
✔ Created application my-app

Step 2: Create Environment

Terminal

$copilot env init --name staging --profile default --default-config

✔ Proposing infrastructure changes for stack my-app-staging
✔ Created environment staging in region ap-southeast-1

Terminal

$copilot env deploy --name staging

✔ Deployed staging environment
VPC: vpc-0abc123...
Subnets: subnet-pub-a, subnet-pub-b, subnet-priv-a, subnet-priv-b

Step 3: Initialize Service

Terminal

$copilot svc init --name frontend --svc-type "Load Balanced Web Service" --dockerfile ./Dockerfile

✔ Created manifest file copilot/frontend/manifest.yml
✔ Your manifest contains configurations like port 3000

Step 4: Deploy

Terminal

$copilot deploy --name frontend --env staging

Building your container image...
Pushing to ECR...
Deploying to ECS Fargate...

✔ Deployed frontend to staging
URL: http://my-app-staging-Publi-XXXXX.ap-southeast-1.elb.amazonaws.com

Useful Commands

Command	Purpose
`copilot svc status`	Check service health
`copilot svc logs --follow`	Stream logs
`copilot svc exec`	SSH into container
`copilot svc pause`	Scale to zero (save costs)
`copilot svc resume`	Scale back up
`copilot app delete`	Delete everything

Cost Control - Important Commands

copilot svc pause --name frontend --env staging - Scale service to 0 tasks (stops Fargate charges)
copilot env delete --name staging - Delete an environment (removes VPC, ALB, NAT Gateway)
copilot app delete - Delete entire application and ALL resources (irreversible)

Always delete unused environments to avoid ongoing charges, especially NAT Gateway costs.

When to Use Copilot vs Terraform

Use Copilot When	Use Terraform When
Getting started quickly	Need fine-grained control
Standard web app patterns	Complex multi-service architectures
Small team, move fast	Infrastructure team, governance needs
AWS-only deployment	Multi-cloud deployment

AWS RDS

Terraform

AWS Copilot

What is AWS Copilot?

Copilot Architecture

Service Types

Deployment Workflow

Initialize Application

Create Environment

Initialize Service

Deploy

Step-by-Step Deployment

Step 1: Initialize Application

Step 2: Create Environment

Step 3: Initialize Service

Step 4: Deploy

Service Manifest

Custom Domain with HTTPS

Worker Service (Background Jobs)

Useful Commands

CI/CD with GitHub Actions

When to Use Copilot vs Terraform