Ivan CernjaThe End of AWS App Runner: What It Means for Your Apps
AWS App Runner is moving to maintenance mode. Here's what changed, what it means for your production apps, and what to do next.
On March 31, 2026, AWS published a service availability update confirming that AWS App Runner is moving to maintenance. Starting April 30, 2026, App Runner will no longer accept new customers. Existing customers can continue using the service normally, including creating new services and resources. AWS will continue to invest in security and availability, but no new features are planned. The recommended migration path is Amazon ECS Express Mode, a new capability inside Amazon ECS.
App Runner launched in May 2021 as AWS's answer to Heroku, Render, and Railway: point at a container image or source repository and get a running service with HTTPS, load balancing, and auto-scaling, without touching VPCs, ECS clusters, or task definitions. Here's what the announcement means in practice and what your options are.
What This Means in Practice
If you have services on App Runner today, nothing changes immediately. Containers keep running, auto-scaling still works, billing stays the same.
Over time, though, a service in maintenance mode brings compounding issues. Runtime versions evolve (Node 24, Python 3.14, Go 1.25), and if App Runner's managed runtimes don't keep up, your deployment options narrow. Security patches come slower with fewer engineers on the team. Integrations with other AWS services (VPC connectors, observability, IAM features) won't gain parity as ECS and Fargate evolve. Support response times will increase as teams shrink.
On the product side, "no new customers" is typically how AWS begins a gradual service sunset. Existing workloads will be honored, but the investment signal is clear: the long-term bet is ECS Express Mode, which consolidates App Runner's simplicity into ECS, the service App Runner ran on top of via Fargate.
None of this happened overnight. App Runner's feature velocity slowed noticeably through 2024 and 2025 while competitors shipped modern capabilities like scale-to-zero, edge deployment, and deeper CI/CD integrations. ECS Express Mode launched at re:Invent in November 2025 with almost everything App Runner offered, plus full access to the ECS feature set. The March 2026 announcement is the official acknowledgment that two services doing the same job was never going to last.
What To Do Next
The urgency depends on your situation. Prototypes, internal tools, and side projects can afford to wait 6-12 months. Production services with moderate traffic, apps using App Runner-specific features like source-based builds or auto-deploy from ECR, and workloads without a clear migration owner should plan within 3-6 months. Mission-critical services, apps that need features App Runner won't be adding, and teams evaluating App Runner for new projects should start now.
There are broadly three paths forward:
- If you're on AWS (or want to be) and want the App Runner experience without the sunset risk, Encore Cloud gives you a
git pushworkflow that provisions managed infrastructure in your own AWS account (powered by Encore, 11k+ GitHub stars). Infrastructure stays in sync with your application code automatically, so there's no drift when AI agents like Cursor or Claude Code change your code. Companies like Groupon, for example, already use this at scale. - Migrate to ECS Express Mode. This is AWS's official recommendation and the most direct replacement. You get nearly the same simplicity with full access to the underlying ECS resources, but you'll need a Docker build pipeline since Express Mode doesn't build from source.
- Move to another managed platform. Services like Render, Fly.io, and Railway offer App Runner-style simplicity. Quick to migrate to, but you're moving off AWS and onto someone else's infrastructure.
Each approach has tradeoffs. Whichever direction you choose, start with a non-critical service. Pick something small, move it to your chosen platform, learn the workflow, then migrate production systems.
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