Feature Parity

Use this page to understand what Gen 1 features are available in Gen 2 and how they've changed.

Backend Categories

The tables below compare Gen 1 and Gen 2 feature availability with respect to backend resource definitions. The Migration Tool column indicates the level of support the migration tool provides for this feature.

Auth

Data

API

Storage

Functions

Hosting

See the full Deploy and Host documentation for comprehensive guidance on Gen 2 deployment options.

In Gen 1, deployment was typically done via amplify push (backend) and amplify publish (frontend) in a custom pipeline, or automatically through the Amplify Hosting service. In Gen 2, these commands no longer exist.

Amplify Hosting

The simplest path is to connect your Git branch in the Amplify Console (App Settings → Branch Settings → Add Branch). See branch deployments for details.

If you use a custom backend pipeline but still want Amplify Hosting for the frontend, update the amplify.yml build spec to run npx ampx generate outputs instead of pipeline-deploy, and use an incoming webhook to trigger the frontend build after your backend pipeline succeeds.

Custom Pipelines

Unlike Gen 1, Gen 2 deployments always require an Amplify app ID and a branch name. If you use your own CI/CD system (AWS CodePipeline, Jenkins, CodeCatalyst, etc.) or a non-Git VCS like SVN, you can drive Gen 2 deployments directly using the ampx CLI. You will need to perform some one-time setup:

# (Optional) Create a new Amplify App — only needed if not reusing your existing app
aws amplify create-app --name my-app

# Register a branch name for your pipeline to deploy to
# (this is a logical name, not necessarily a real Git branch)
aws amplify create-branch --app-id <APP_ID> --branch-name gen2-main

# Disable auto-build so Amplify doesn't build on git push
aws amplify update-branch --app-id <APP_ID> --branch-name gen2-main --no-enable-auto-build

Then, in your pipeline build steps:

npm ci
export CI=1
npx ampx pipeline-deploy --branch gen2-main --app-id <AMPLIFY_APP_ID>

See the custom pipelines guide for full details.

Frontend Hosting Without Amplify

If you host your frontend separately (S3 + CloudFront, on-prem, etc.), run npx ampx generate outputs in your pipeline to produce amplify_outputs.json, then bundle it with your frontend build artifacts.

Other categories

Amplify JS Auth API documentation

Tooling and Workflows

CLI

Gen 2 replaces the Gen 1 CLI wizard approach with a code-first model using TypeScript and CDK. The following table summarizes the key differences:

The Gen 2 CLI (@aws-amplify/backend-cli) is invoked via npx ampx <command>. All commands support AWS CLI environment variables (AWS_PROFILE, AWS_REGION). See the full CLI commands reference.

Console & Developer Experience

These are runtime, console, and tooling features that are not part of backend resource definitions and do not involve infrastructure migration.

UI Builder

The Gen 1 UI Builder is part of Amplify Studio, the visual tool for managing Gen 1 applications. No such UI exists for Gen 2, but near-full feature parity can be achieved using the Amplify UI Builder Figma Plugin.

Prerequisites: design using Figma based on the Amplify UI Kit, and install the Amplify UI Builder Plugin.