Serverless doesn’t eliminate servers—it hides them. Cloud providers operate massive fleets of physical machines behind the scenes. Developers simply don’t provision or maintain them directly. This abstraction simplifies development while preserving powerful compute capabilities. The term “serverless” reflects a shift in responsibility, not physical reality. Understanding this clears up one of the biggest misconceptions in cloud computing.
Clarifying the myth helps teams set realistic expectations. Serverless is about abstraction, not disappearance.
This understanding improves architectural decisions and avoids misplaced assumptions about limitations.
Serverless still runs on servers—you just never manage them.
[Cloudflare, cloudflare.com]