It never fails. Every time I talk about serverless, someone pushes back with the cold start argument. I still see it in forums, in blog comments, in architecture review meetings. "Sure, but what about cold starts?" I get it. Five or six years ago, that was a legitimate concern. But it's 2026. The data tells a different story. And if you're still making decisions based on the cold start argument, you're arguing against a version of Lambda that hasn't existed in years. How Long Are Lambda Cold Starts in 2026? Let's start with what cold starts actually look like today. These numbers come from production workloads observed in the wild , not synthetic hello-world tests. Your mileage will vary by package size, initialization code, and memory configuration, but the ranges are representative of what teams are seeing in 2026.…