Do I need a webhook listener in my backend or can I handle it with serverless?

You can absolutely handle webhooks with serverless — you do not need a traditional always-on backend listener.

When serverless works well

Use serverless if your webhook provider can send requests to a public HTTPS endpoint and your handler can:

• receive the request
• verify the signature / authenticity
• process quickly
• return a 2xx response

This is a very common setup with:

• AWS Lambda + API Gateway
• Google Cloud Functions / Cloud Run
• Azure Functions
• Vercel / Netlify functions
• Firebase Functions

Typical webhook flow

1. Provider sends webhook to your endpoint
2. Serverless function receives it
3. You validate it
4. You enqueue work or process it
5. You return 200 OK fast

Important caveats

Serverless is fine, but watch out for:

• Cold starts: usually okay for webhooks, but can add latency
• Timeouts: don’t do long processing inline
• Retries: webhook providers often retry on failure, so handlers should be idempotent
• Signature verification: many providers require the raw request body
• Background jobs: heavy work is better queued to a worker

When a traditional backend may be better

A persistent backend can be easier if you need:

• long-running processing
• complex connection state
• very custom networking
• streaming or websocket handling
• lots of internal orchestration in one process

Recommendation

For most webhook use cases, serverless is a great choice. A common pattern is:

• serverless webhook endpoint for intake
• queue / task system for downstream processing

If you want, I can sketch a serverless webhook architecture for your stack (AWS, Vercel, GCP, etc.).