Azure Functions are serverless, so they scale up automatically when needed, and I don't have to worry about managing the infrastructure. You only pay for what you use, which is way more cost-effective, especially if the workload varies. Plus, they integrate super well with other Azure services. On the other hand, hosting a .NET Core app on a VM means (then I got interrupted) NO !!!! NO !!! NO !!!!! this is not a valid way !!!!