--- title: You Want Microservices—But Do You Need Them? | daily.dev description: Microservices have become the default architectural choice despite their significant complexity costs. Amazon Prime Video achieved 90% cost reduction by... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/you-want-microservices-but-do-you-need-them--rxvxkwg2c twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: You Want Microservices—But Do You Need Them? | daily.dev og:description: Microservices have become the default architectural choice despite their significant complexity costs. Amazon Prime Video achieved 90% cost reduction by... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/you-want-microservices-but-do-you-need-them--rxvxkwg2c og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/rxVXKwG2C.png og:image:alt: You Want Microservices—But Do You Need Them? og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # You Want Microservices—But Do You Need Them? **[Docker](https://daily.dev/sources/docker)** · 16 min read · 150 upvotes · 11 comments ## Summary Microservices have become the default architectural choice despite their significant complexity costs. Amazon Prime Video achieved 90% cost reduction by reverting to a monolith, while companies like Twilio Segment and Shopify found success with simpler architectures. Industry leaders including GitHub's former CTO and GraphQL's co-creator warn that most organizations lack the scale to justify microservices overhead. The operational costs, developer productivity drain, testing complexity, and data consistency challenges often outweigh benefits. Modular monoliths and service-oriented architectures offer comparable scalability without distributed system complexity. Docker provides deployment consistency across any architecture, not just microservices. The key question: does your actual scale and team structure justify the microservices premium, or are you choosing complexity over business needs? ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community discussion Top comments from developers on daily.dev. **@akkitto** · 10 upvotes > I don't know, why so many people pretend or complain, microservices are supposedly so overly complex. > > If you would make a logical graph of how complex each system is, then microservice architecture would land very high on the simplicity meter, while any monolith would excel at usually being way too complex. It's *simple* as that. **@lakshitgupta** · 5 upvotes > This is mislead yes one of the service have been switched to monolith, but a good chunk of amazon prime video still runs on micro service architechture and the reason was how moolith and microservice for tht particular task . **@alvesman** · 2 upvotes > Yes I really do. The problem is most people don't use the right software patterns, implementing an ecosystem of mini monoliths that communicate amongst them, and call that "microsservices". If you choose the right zero trust architecture, the right message broker and the right tools for tracing, logging and pay attention to observability patterns, microsservices are extremely powerful. **@pauvilardell** · 1 upvotes > The Prime Video move back to monolith wasn't a failure of microservices, it was a victory for **Common Sense**. We've spent 5 years over-engineering simple CRUD apps into distributed nightmares just for the sake of 'scalability' we never reached. > > For 90% of startups, a **Modular Monolith** is the sweet spot. You get the organization of microservices without the network latency and DevOps overhead. Don't build for Netflix-scale if you have 10,000 users. Build for speed. **@andrewtomczak** · 1 upvotes > A micro service application with a monolith DevOps is still a monolith. Lets try building a service. Now, it is getting too complex. Stop there, and build another service. lets not just start adding services for no reason. Don't start building complexity into interaction between services. So microservices work, if they are done in small silos, and don't overly complicate the hell out of them. There are a lot of landmines and automatic machine guns available, in order to blow things up and shoot yourself in the foot, just like PHP and Spiderman. "With great power comes great responsibility." ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [The Microservice That Should Have Been a Function, CodeGood](https://daily.dev/posts/the-microservice-that-should-have-been-a-function-codegood-l8ycqeu1k) · CodeGood · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Microservices vs Monolithic Architecture: What Nobody Tells You Until You've Lived Through Both](https://daily.dev/posts/microservices-vs-monolithic-architecture-what-nobody-tells-you-until-you-ve-lived-through-both-sju1wi5pt) · SitePoint · 41 upvotes · 10 comments - [When to Use Microservices \(And When Not To\) in .NET](https://daily.dev/posts/when-to-use-microservices-and-when-not-to-in-net-bexpylmbp) · Code with Mukesh · 12 upvotes · 0 comments - [Microservices Are Killing Your Performance \(And Here's the Math\)](https://daily.dev/posts/microservices-are-killing-your-performance-and-here-s-the-math--oc7oxm66d) · DEV · 435 upvotes · 39 comments --- Tags: [#architecture](https://daily.dev/tags/architecture), [#docker](https://daily.dev/tags/docker), [#microservices](https://daily.dev/tags/microservices), [#distributed-systems](https://daily.dev/tags/distributed-systems), [#monolith](https://daily.dev/tags/monolith) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/you-want-microservices-but-do-you-need-them--rxvxkwg2c) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"You Want Microservices—But Do You Need Them?","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/you-want-microservices-but-do-you-need-them--rxvxkwg2c","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/you-want-microservices-but-do-you-need-them--rxvxkwg2c"},"datePublished":"2025-11-28T14:01:55.304Z","dateModified":"2025-11-28T14:02:22.667Z","description":"Microservices have become the default architectural choice despite their significant complexity costs. Amazon Prime Video achieved 90% cost reduction by...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/7be8a0db8ab91f7126d8d6f3da0e7f7f?_a=AQAEulh","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/7be8a0db8ab91f7126d8d6f3da0e7f7f?_a=AQAEulh","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Docker","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Docker","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/8a1022bebfc04a7d824c309bd3686787","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/docker"},"commentCount":11,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/you-want-microservices-but-do-you-need-them--rxvxkwg2c","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":150},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":11}],"keywords":"architecture,docker,microservices,distributed-systems,monolith","timeRequired":"PT16M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Docker","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/docker"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"You Want Microservices—But Do You Need Them?"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/you-want-microservices-but-do-you-need-them--rxvxkwg2c","comment":[{"@type":"Comment","text":"I don’t know, why so many people pretend or complain, microservices are supposedly so overly complex.\nIf you would make a logical graph of how complex each system is, then microservice architecture would land very high on the simplicity meter, while any monolith would excel at usually being way too complex. It’s simple as that.","datePublished":"2025-12-08T16:30:12.118Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/rxVXKwG2C#c-UJv9ddzoi","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Daniel","url":"https://daily.dev/akkitto","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--FtwJqX4c--/f_auto/v1754900041/avatars/avatar_29TCpY2hJR72V3BlxPXzX?_a=BAMClqZW0"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":10}},{"@type":"Comment","text":"This is mislead yes one of the service have been switched to monolith, but a good chunk of amazon prime video still runs on micro service architechture and the reason was how moolith and microservice for tht particular task .","datePublished":"2025-12-09T22:39:16.227Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/rxVXKwG2C#c-YN4y6fikO","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"lakshit gupta","url":"https://daily.dev/lakshitgupta","image":"https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/a/ACg8ocIPxHyvHUfwfjVRCUSuV5rBJzCkf4xB4J02xIkwHXbo-vyH9J66sw=s96-c"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":5}},{"@type":"Comment","text":"Yes I really do. The problem is most people don’t use the right software patterns, implementing an ecosystem of mini monoliths that communicate amongst them, and call that “microsservices”. If you choose the right zero trust architecture, the right message broker and the right tools for tracing, logging and pay attention to observability patterns, microsservices are extremely powerful.","datePublished":"2026-02-07T12:43:28.814Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/rxVXKwG2C#c-8mMaWBqXJ","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Manuel Alves","url":"https://daily.dev/alvesman","image":"https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/a/ACg8ocIujW_znUODBGS4JQldAmtzwqMpH9f5GWXI5h4IBlYmPhoK=s96-c"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":2}},{"@type":"Comment","text":"The Prime Video move back to monolith wasn’t a failure of microservices, it was a victory for Common Sense. We’ve spent 5 years over-engineering simple CRUD apps into distributed nightmares just for the sake of ‘scalability’ we never reached.\nFor 90% of startups, a Modular Monolith is the sweet spot. You get the organization of microservices without the network latency and DevOps overhead. Don’t build for Netflix-scale if you have 10,000 users. Build for speed.","datePublished":"2026-02-21T22:58:04.035Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/rxVXKwG2C#c-rJAw2vynf","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Pau Vilardell","url":"https://daily.dev/pauvilardell","image":"https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/a/ACg8ocJjltCe3OLgjFWCOks-3_EpTBqtX6_6pIqLgg1ZJiyC2bIavxk=s96-c"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":1}},{"@type":"Comment","text":"A micro service application with a monolith DevOps is still a monolith. Lets try building a service. Now, it is getting too complex. Stop there, and build another service. lets not just start adding services for no reason. Don’t start building complexity into interaction between services. So microservices work, if they are done in small silos, and don’t overly complicate the hell out of them. There are a lot of landmines and automatic machine guns available, in order to blow things up and shoot yourself in the foot, just like PHP and Spiderman. “With great power comes great responsibility.”","datePublished":"2026-01-24T03:32:06.884Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/rxVXKwG2C#c-fm0v9Z2z1","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Andrew Tomczak","url":"https://daily.dev/andrewtomczak","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--O0TOmw4y--/f_auto/v1715772965/public/noProfile"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":1}}]} ```