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Amazon Aurora pros and cons

Vendor: Amazon Web Services (AWS)

4.2 out of 5

21 reviews
100% willing to recommend

Pros & Cons summary

Amazon Aurora provides performance and cost efficiency, offering compatibility with MySQL or PostgreSQL for easier database management. It features auto-scaling, log rolling, and offloaded maintainability to Amazon, reducing operational overhead. While scalability is notable, performance could improve with a reduced cost. Enhancements in access levels, distributed query processing for MySQL, and PostgreSQL extensions are needed. Migration challenges from PostgreSQL RDS exist without direct snapshot provisioning.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Amazon Aurora provides performance and cost efficiency, along with multiple-read and single-write capabilities natively with reduced maintenance requirements.

Its compatibility with MySQL or PostgreSQL simplifies database management and migration processes, avoiding source code changes.

Aurora offers hands-off self-management features like log rolling and auto-scaling, enhancing database operations.

The scalability of Amazon Aurora is notable; it handles scaling up and down efficiently without maintenance windows during unpredictable workloads.

The maintainability is offloaded to Amazon, meaning users don't need to handle database provisioning or administrative tasks, reducing operational overhead.

CONS

Pricing could improve and should be reduced to justify the cost from a performance standpoint.

Access levels could be better and costs reduced for Aurora to enhance value.

Aurora's distributed query process for MySQL requires enhancement for better performance.

Frequent upgrades of base PostgreSQL versions and offering more PostgreSQL extensions would benefit users.

There are challenges during migration from PostgreSQL RDS to Aurora, particularly with the inability to provision using a PostgreSQL snapshot directly.

Amazon Aurora Pros review quotes

SivashankarRajaram

Principal Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

May 4, 2026

The main benefits my company receives from Amazon Aurora are performance and cost.

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Rubens Oliveira

Data & Solution Archtect at Enkel

Jul 23, 2025

Amazon Aurora's best features are about scaling up and scaling down, which is perfect.

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SP

Satheesh Papisetty

Digital Services & Engagement Senior Manager at AXA

Mar 6, 2025

My overall experience with Amazon Aurora is very positive. I rate it ten out of ten for its reliability and efficiency.

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Associate Vice President - Database Management (Principal Solutions Architect) at Northbay

Apr 30, 2025

Amazon Aurora is built on community databases and AWS has added additional features to it, allowing customers to have enterprise-level features at a lower cost.

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Prabakar Vellaipandian

Staff Software Engineer at Altimetrik (Deployed at FORD)

Feb 7, 2025

The most valuable features of Amazon Aurora include the global instance with the global writer endpoint, which allows failovers and instance switches without requiring changes in my code, thanks to the default global Route 53 endpoint.

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AWS Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Dec 2, 2024

One of the most valuable features is storage scaling.

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Web Developer and IT Consultant at a educational organization with 1,001-5,000 employees

Jan 2, 2025

They now offer some really good scaling and limitless versions that are available to me, which I find very impressive.

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Rajitha Jatothu

Aws Devops Engineer at LTIMindtree

Dec 20, 2024

Aurora is a key pillar for us, offering performance and availability.

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Cloud - Solution Architect at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees

Aug 27, 2024

Amazon Aurora stands out for its ease of use in a managed environment, inbuilt security, continuous backups, numerous read replicas, multi-region automated replication, and seamless integration with other AWS services.

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PP

ParsuramPanigrahi

CTO at Atulya Abhinav Tech Private Limited

Feb 25, 2025

One of the standout features of Amazon Aurora is that we do not need to maintain disaster recovery or manage availability zones.

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Show 7 more reviews (out of 17)

Amazon Aurora Cons review quotes

SivashankarRajaram

Principal Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

May 4, 2026

Amazon can make better access levels and reduce costs for Amazon Aurora.

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Rubens Oliveira

Data & Solution Archtect at Enkel

Jul 23, 2025

I don't use Amazon Aurora's global database feature; I just use the local feature.

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SP

Satheesh Papisetty

Digital Services & Engagement Senior Manager at AXA

Mar 6, 2025

A challenge I noticed is during migration from PostgreSQL RDS to Amazon Aurora. There are technical challenges, such as the inability to provision the database using a PostgreSQL snapshot directly.

Read full review

Free Report: Amazon Aurora Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about Amazon Aurora. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2026.

893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Associate Vice President - Database Management (Principal Solutions Architect) at Northbay

Apr 30, 2025

Amazon Aurora should upgrade its base PostgreSQL versions more frequently and offer all PostgreSQL extensions.

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Prabakar Vellaipandian

Staff Software Engineer at Altimetrik (Deployed at FORD)

Feb 7, 2025

In Oracle, tools like Veridata allow for comparing databases and certifying data accuracy, even offering repair capabilities, which are missing in Aurora. There should be a similar comparison tool in Aurora.

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AWS Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Dec 2, 2024

One of the most valuable features is storage scaling.

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Web Developer and IT Consultant at a educational organization with 1,001-5,000 employees

Jan 2, 2025

Sometimes mistakes can be easily made, and people can waste money by mistake if they do not know what they are doing.

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Rajitha Jatothu

Aws Devops Engineer at LTIMindtree

Dec 20, 2024

Room for improvement might be in the UI, integrations, or data working capabilities for better user experience.

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Cloud - Solution Architect at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees

Aug 27, 2024

While Amazon Aurora meets your current scaling and storage needs, there is room for improvement in cryptography and scalability compared to other databases.

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PP

ParsuramPanigrahi

CTO at Atulya Abhinav Tech Private Limited

Feb 25, 2025

There are tuning challenges.

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Show 7 more reviews (out of 17)

Product Categories

Product Categories

Relational Databases Tools

Database Management Systems (DBMS)

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See all alternatives

Product Categories

Product Categories

Relational Databases Tools

Database Management Systems (DBMS)

Popular Comparisons

Popular Comparisons

Teradata vs Amazon Aurora

SQL Server vs Amazon Aurora

MySQL vs Amazon Aurora

Oracle Database vs Amazon Aurora

Snowflake vs Amazon Aurora

SAP HANA vs Amazon Aurora

MariaDB vs Amazon Aurora

IBM Db2 Database vs Amazon Aurora

CockroachDB vs Amazon Aurora

Google Cloud SQL vs Amazon Aurora

YugabyteDB vs Amazon Aurora

Citus Data vs Amazon Aurora

IBM Informix vs Amazon Aurora

Oracle MySQL Cloud Service vs Amazon Aurora

Oracle Database Cloud Service vs Amazon Aurora

See all alternatives

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