A lot of ECS comparisons usually reduce the discussion to something simple:
<ul>
<li>EC2 = cheaper</li>
<li>Fargate = easier</li>
</ul>
But once workloads start scaling in production, the tradeoff becomes much more operational than most teams expect.
Running ECS on EC2 gives much more infrastructure control and can reduce costs significantly, especially for predictable workloads. But it also means managing cluster scaling, patching, instance lifecycle management, and capacity planning yourself.
Fargate removes most of that operational overhead completely.
No EC2 hosts to maintain.
No infrastructure patching.
No capacity management at the instance layer.
The interesting part is that many teams eventually stop treating this as an either-or decision.
They end up mixing both approaches:
<ul>
<li>predictable workloads on EC2</li>
<li>services where reducing infrastructure management matters more on Fargate</li>
</ul>
I recently came across a useful breakdown comparing ECS on EC2 and Fargate from both the cost and operational perspective:
<a href="https://www.kubeblogs.com/ec2-or-fargate/" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">https://www.kubeblogs.com/ec2-or-fargate/</a>

DevOps Daily

ECS comparisons often oversimplify the EC2 vs Fargate decision as cost vs ease. In production, the tradeoff is more operational: EC2 offers cost savings and control but requires managing cluster scaling, patching, and capacity planning, while Fargate eliminates that overhead entirely. Many teams end up using a hybrid approach, running predictable workloads on EC2 and less predictable or operationally sensitive services on Fargate.

Most ECS Discussions Ignore the Real Tradeoff Between EC2 and Fargate