Tip 1: Packaging of aws-sdk The aws-sdk comes bundled with the Lambda execution environment, but you should not rely on this. Instead you should pack the aws-sdk in your deployment package because: the one in the Lambda execution environment is always a few months old, so probably missing patches, security updates, etc. it’ll introduce difference to what I had tested AWS can update it without notice, so far I haven’t heard of anyone running into issues in Node.