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Amazon Aurora vs Amazon Aurora Serverless comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon Aurora
Ranking in Relational Databases Tools
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
Database Management Systems (DBMS) (5th)
Amazon Aurora Serverless
Ranking in Relational Databases Tools
22nd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.8
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2025, in the Relational Databases Tools category, the mindshare of Amazon Aurora is 2.8%, down from 3.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon Aurora Serverless is 1.0%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Relational Databases Tools Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Amazon Aurora2.8%
Amazon Aurora Serverless1.0%
Other96.2%
Relational Databases Tools
 

Featured Reviews

SP
Digital Services & Engagement Senior Manager at AXA
High availability and operational efficiency achieved with reliable managed services
We have primarily used Amazon Aurora for handling our databases. We migrated from PostgreSQL to Amazon Aurora about a year ago. It serves as a customized PostgreSQL database that we utilize Amazon Aurora offers a 99.9% SLA compared to PostgreSQL. This ensures a high level of availability for our…
MohitGupta3 - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Infrastructure Architect - AWS at Infopro Digital
Seamless growth management through serverless efficiency and reasonable pricing
The most valuable feature of Amazon Aurora Serverless is its serverless nature, which means I do not have to maintain the underlying infrastructure. Additionally, it is highly scalable, and its pricing model is favorable. Aurora's automatic scaling greatly enhances our operational efficiency by eliminating the need to set specific thresholds and preventing client data access issues due to uneven growth. Its serverless setup allows us to manage costs effectively. Other notable features include direct integration with tools like SFTP Go for media file uploads, automatic backups ensuring data recovery, and its scalability in terms of handling growing database demands.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"We had better control over the parameters that we could tweak in terms of intermediate storage and better indexing capabilities."
"The migration process to Amazon Aurora is the best part; it's one of its key strengths, as we hardly had any hiccups during migration, which was very smooth and pretty straightforward given our data was mostly in English."
"The most valuable feature of Amazon Aurora is SQL standardization, it doesn't have its own syntax which is good. It has a lot of hands-off self-management type of activities, such as log rolling and auto-scaling."
"One of the most valuable features is storage scaling."
"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."
"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."
"Amazon Aurora's best features are about scaling up and scaling down, which is perfect."
"They now offer some really good scaling and limitless versions that are available to me, which I find very impressive."
"The most valuable feature of Amazon Aurora Serverless is its serverless nature, which means I do not have to maintain the underlying infrastructure."
"Amazon Aurora Serverless is easy to scale, offering a cluster-based shared scaling model with options for Autoscale."
"Aurora could improve its affordability, even though its price is very completive compared to DBs as SLQ Server."
 

Cons

"One of the most valuable features is storage scaling."
"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."
"I don't use Amazon Aurora's global database feature; I just use the local feature."
"I would like to see more AI-related features in future releases."
"The product's distributed query process for MySQL needs improvement."
"It would have been helpful if they had provided some benchmarking numbers."
"Amazon Aurora should upgrade its base PostgreSQL versions more frequently and offer all PostgreSQL extensions."
"It is a bit costly. The features are quite good, and I wouldn't say it requires any technical improvements. But from a cost perspective, some clients wouldn't go for Aurora because of that."
"Aurora could improve its affordability, as it is currently considered a bit expensive."
"Amazon Aurora could improve its detailed monitoring, especially in CloudWatch, to provide more precise query level insights."
"Amazon Aurora Serverless could benefit from a few more security features, particularly in terms of its accessibility."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is an expensive solution."
"It is quite expensive."
"I would rate the pricing a six out of ten, with ten being expensive."
"The tool’s pricing depends on the instance type. For cost optimization purposes, we use the result instance category."
"There is no need to buy a license for the product. We can pay as per the use case."
"The price could be lower compared to its competitors."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
7%
University
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise13
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon Aurora?
Aurora's compatibility with MySQL or PostgreSQL benefited our database management. The migration from on-premise MySQL to Aurora was similar, so we didn't need to change our source code.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon Aurora?
The pricing for Amazon Aurora is different from DocumentDB because DocumentDB is cheaper. However, when you manage the administration more closely, you can control costs better with Amazon Aurora. ...
What needs improvement with Amazon Aurora?
I would like to see some tutorials from Amazon for Aurora because I'm too new to it. I believe Amazon can make more tutorials for the product since there's a lot of reading required, and a short tu...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon Aurora Serverless?
In my experience, Aurora is a bit expensive. The costs depend on the size of the database.
What needs improvement with Amazon Aurora Serverless?
Aurora could improve its affordability, as it is currently considered a bit expensive. There is room to make it more cost-effective for users even though its price is very completive compared to DB...
What is your primary use case for Amazon Aurora Serverless?
I use Aurora mainly for creating and maintaining databases, such as Aurora (MySQL version) databases, within the system. I value it for its network security and quicker recovery options.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Dow Jones, Arizona State University, Verizon, Capital One, United Nations, Nielsen, Autodesk, Fanduel
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Aurora vs. Amazon Aurora Serverless and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
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