serverless
adj.adj. a way of building software where you do not have to manage the physical computers or systems yourself. The cloud company handles all the technical work of running the code for you.
adj. describing a cloud computing model where the provider dynamically manages the allocation of machine resources. The user focuses on code execution without the operational overhead of provisioning or maintaining physical or virtual infrastructure.
We moved our website to a serverless platform to save money.
By adopting a serverless architecture, the startup scaled its application to millions of users without hiring a dedicated infrastructure team.
The transition to serverless computing allowed the engineering department to focus exclusively on feature development, as the cloud provider handled all scaling, patching, and hardware management automatically.
A compound formed from the noun server and the suffix -less. The term began to gain traction in the software industry around 2012, notably following the introduction of the Iron.io IronWorker platform.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Typically used attributively before nouns like 'architecture', 'computing', or 'function'.
Last updated July 22, 2026