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Amazon Aurora vs Amazon RDS comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
5.0
Users switching to Amazon Aurora reduced costs by 30%, improved performance, and saved $60,000 yearly, enhancing efficiency.
Sentiment score
2.6
Organizations benefit financially from Amazon RDS's cost-effectiveness, agility, and scalability, despite varying results and AWS expense concerns.
Using Amazon Aurora has saved us significantly in terms of manpower costs, with nearly fifty percent savings compared to an on-premises solution.
Digital Services & Engagement Senior Manager at AXA
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
5.6
Amazon Aurora customer service varies, with effective support for high-tier plans but limited help for non-business users.
Sentiment score
6.8
Amazon RDS support varies by level and location; premium is efficient, but US standard support often lacks expertise.
Technical support from Amazon is rated very highly.
Digital Services & Engagement Senior Manager at AXA
The initial support could improve by having engineers familiarize themselves with the issue content to provide more specialized assistance from the start.
Associate Vice President - Database Management (Principal Solutions Architect) at Northbay
The documentation is quite good.
Corporate Database Architect at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
The official AWS technical support for Amazon RDS is helpful, providing 24/7 assistance for all business support cases with tools such as the health dashboard and AWS trusted advisor.
AWS Architect at Virtual University
I would rate the support from AWS very high, maybe nine, but it also depends on what kind of support you have signed in your contract, whether the premium support or the standard support.
Director Software Engineer at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
Amazon Aurora's exceptional scalability effortlessly handles large data volumes, ensuring high performance and growth with minimal operational disruptions.
Sentiment score
7.1
Amazon RDS is praised for its scalability and reliability, though some express minor concerns with large dataset management.
This scalability is critical as it allows for runtime expansion, which is essential for businesses moving from on-premises to the cloud.
Associate Vice President - Database Management (Principal Solutions Architect) at Northbay
Regarding scalability and the ability to scale, I would give it a 9.5 out of ten.
Principal Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Its automated scaling, both in storage and instances, is vital as it eliminates manual interventions.
AICE Graduate at alx_africa
The installation of Amazon RDS is quite easy and quite scalable.
Director Software Engineer at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
Despite being a strong feature, scalability could be improved due to the lack of full functionality in autoscaling.
VP engineering at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
Amazon Aurora is stable and reliable, with high user ratings and effective management of MySQL and PostgreSQL availability.
Sentiment score
8.1
Amazon RDS is praised for reliability, performance, and uptime with minimal issues, especially with Multi-AZ enhancing stability.
It offers a stable environment, ensuring consistent performance.
Associate Vice President - Database Management (Principal Solutions Architect) at Northbay
I would rate the stability of Amazon Aurora as a nine out of ten.
Principal Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Amazon RDS is very stable when deployed correctly across different zones with the right configurations.
AICE Graduate at alx_africa
It is a stable product overall, with very few issues.
VP engineering at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
So far, I have not had any outages, crashes, or downtime.
Dev Ops Engineer at MyRobin.ID
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon Aurora needs improved pricing, performance, scalability, developer features, documentation, compatibility, integration, and regular updates for user satisfaction.
Amazon RDS users seek improvements in security, documentation, scalability, integration, and support, with enhanced customization and cost reduction.
There are technical challenges, such as the inability to provision the database using a PostgreSQL snapshot directly.
Digital Services & Engagement Senior Manager at AXA
Keeping extensions up-to-date with PostgreSQL releases would enhance Aurora's functionality.
Associate Vice President - Database Management (Principal Solutions Architect) at Northbay
A cost reduction would support multiple teams to adopt this solution since the cost is currently higher.
Principal Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Simplifying migration for those transitioning from on-premises to cloud environments.
AICE Graduate at alx_africa
Having native Change Data Capture (CDC) support would be beneficial, allowing for seamless integration with Kafka without relying on external technologies like Debezium.
VP engineering at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Enabling performance insights to view query formats where the bottlenecks occur, identifying the fixes, slow queries, and missing indexes.
AWS Architect at Virtual University
 

Setup Cost

Amazon Aurora's pricing is justified by its speed and features, with costs based on memory, storage, and usage.
Amazon RDS pricing is usage-dependent and cost-effective, offering savings on admin costs but can be expensive compared to alternatives.
The pricing is reasonable and not overly expensive.
Digital Services & Engagement Senior Manager at AXA
Amazon Aurora is not very expensive as other solutions with similar features from other vendors come at almost the same cost.
Associate Vice President - Database Management (Principal Solutions Architect) at Northbay
The pricing for Amazon Aurora is different from DocumentDB because DocumentDB is cheaper.
Data & Solution Archtect at Enkel
While Azure provides great services, long-term plans on AWS are 20% to 30% cheaper.
AWS Engineer at Neurolov.ai
I find the pricing of Amazon RDS fair, as AWS operates on a pay-for-what-you-use model.
AICE Graduate at alx_africa
I rate the price for Amazon as eight on a scale from one to ten.
Corporate Database Architect at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
 

Valuable Features

Amazon Aurora offers high performance, auto-scaling, AWS integration, with MySQL/PostgreSQL compatibility and managed architecture for efficient database management.
Amazon RDS provides scalability, security, and flexibility with multi-engine support and simplified operations for diverse applications.
Amazon Aurora offers a 99.9% SLA compared to PostgreSQL. This ensures a high level of availability for our applications.
Digital Services & Engagement Senior Manager at AXA
It replicates data across multiple Availability Zones, ensuring high availability and geographical redundancy, which can be considered a GR instead of a DR.
Associate Vice President - Database Management (Principal Solutions Architect) at Northbay
The functions I have found most valuable in Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL are features that are not available in normal RDS PostgreSQL, particularly for scaling and restoration purposes in the event of failure.
Principal Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Amazon RDS provides data encryption using services like KMS, crucial for securing high-sensitive data and meeting compliance requirements such as HIPAA or PCI DSS.
AICE Graduate at alx_africa
Database management is effective in Amazon RDS because it offers automated backups, high availability, read replicas, and support from multiple database engineers, while also providing security, monitoring and metrics, scalability.
AWS Architect at Virtual University
In some cases, we are using the read replica feature, and it does improve our application performance because we do not allow any downstream system to come to the main storage or main databases and perform a query.
Director Software Engineer at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon Aurora
Ranking in Relational Databases Tools
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
Database Management Systems (DBMS) (6th)
Amazon RDS
Ranking in Relational Databases Tools
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
59
Ranking in other categories
Database as a Service (DBaaS) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Relational Databases Tools category, the mindshare of Amazon Aurora is 3.2%, up from 2.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon RDS is 1.2%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Relational Databases Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Amazon Aurora3.2%
Amazon RDS1.2%
Other95.6%
Relational Databases Tools
 

Featured Reviews

SivashankarRajaram - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Cloud database has delivered high performance and cost savings for data recovery and growth
Amazon can make better access levels and reduce costs for Amazon Aurora. A cost reduction would support multiple teams to adopt this solution since the cost is currently higher. Comparatively, we have the feature of scaling and everything we need. If you launch PostgreSQL on-premises, you need to have a separate DBA for maintenance and everything. If Amazon reduces the cost of Amazon Aurora, it would support large team adoption. A great feature to see in the next version of Amazon Aurora would be improvements in vectorization. In our PostgreSQL, we have pg_vector that helps with vectorizing many of the tables and that is used for data science projects. If Amazon improves this vectorization, it would be much more useful for data science and AI projects.
reviewer2592669 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director Software Engineer at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
Positive experiences with database services, with minor room for feature enhancements observed
I don't really see any disadvantages of Amazon RDS. With Oracle, I think AWS doesn't provide the RAC stability. If you have Oracle installed in your own data centers, you can set up various clusters and we can set up the RACs, but in Amazon RDS, we cannot have the RAC feature of Oracle. They could add that feature. Amazon RDS has limitations regarding RAC. If we talk about installing Oracle in RDS, we cannot have the RAC, but if you deploy Oracle on GCP, then there is probably the RAC feature available. I observed that around two or three years back, but I'm not sure whether they have added the RAC feature in AWS. Amazon RDS is expensive compared to GCP. GCP also has the same features, and although it is quite extensive and feature-rich, I see Amazon RDS as slightly expensive compared to other clouds.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
University
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Construction Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
University
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise14
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business23
Midsize Enterprise16
Large Enterprise24
 

Questions from the Community

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?
Amazon can make better access levels and reduce costs for Amazon Aurora. A cost reduction would support multiple teams to adopt this solution since the cost is currently higher. Comparatively, we h...
What is your primary use case for Amazon Aurora?
Amazon Aurora is a service provided by AWS, and we received support from AWS for our implementation. The direction we are moving toward is specifically Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL.
What needs improvement with Amazon RDS?
Currently, I cannot think of any major improvements. Perhaps more platforms in terms of database engine versions would be beneficial. Right now, Amazon RDS supports MySQL and PostgreSQL, but there ...
What is your primary use case for Amazon RDS?
I am a Solutions Architect, so I design solutions for our clients. Prior to this role, I was an implementation engineer, so I also implement solutions for our customers.
 

Also Known As

No data available
RDS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Dow Jones, Arizona State University, Verizon, Capital One, United Nations, Nielsen, Autodesk, Fanduel
Edmodo
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Aurora vs. Amazon RDS and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,988 professionals have used our research since 2012.