Amazon Aurora vs Amazon RDS on Outposts comparison

Amazon Aurora and Amazon RDS on Outposts are both solutions in the Relational Databases Tools category. Amazon Aurora is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.5, while Amazon RDS on Outposts is ranked #23 with an average rating of 8.5. Amazon Aurora holds a 3.0% mindshare in SQL, compared to Amazon RDS on Outposts’s 0.2% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Amazon Aurora users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Amazon RDS on Outposts users who would recommend it.

Amazon Aurora

Read 18 Amazon Aurora reviews

2,410 Views
1,575 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Amazon RDS on Outposts

Read 4 Amazon RDS on Outposts reviews

75 Views
23 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Amazon Aurora

Amazon RDS on Outposts

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

Amazon Aurora and Amazon RDS on Outposts compete in the database services category. Amazon Aurora seems to have the upper hand in scalability and performance, while Amazon RDS on Outposts excels in data residency requirements and integration with on-premises environments.

Features: Amazon Aurora offers scalability with support for up to 15 low-latency read replicas, automated failovers, and continuous backups. Amazon RDS on Outposts provides localization advantages, supports multiple database engines, and integrates seamlessly with on-premises environments.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Amazon RDS on Outposts offers a beneficial deployment model for on-premises environments with low-latency data access. It is designed for enterprises with specific data residency and compliance requirements. Amazon Aurora provides a fully managed service focusing on rapid scalability and cloud-centric workloads. Both services offer strong customer support.

Pricing and ROI: Amazon Aurora's pricing model supports cloud scalability with a pay-as-you-go approach, ensuring cost efficiency for dynamic workloads. Amazon RDS on Outposts requires upfront hardware investment, catering to businesses needing on-premises solutions. Aurora's ROI is influenced by its performance and elasticity, while RDS on Outposts benefits from its integration capabilities and compliance advantages.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon Aurora vs. Amazon RDS on Outposts Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Aurora vs. Amazon RDS on Outposts

June 2025

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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

7th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Amazon RDS on Outposts

Ranking in Relational Databases Tools

23rd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Relational Databases Tools category, the mindshare of Amazon Aurora is 3.0%, down from 4.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon RDS on Outposts is 0.2%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Relational Databases Tools

Featured Reviews

Adnan Shafiq

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

High availability and geographical redundancy ensure reliable performance and cost efficiency

Amazon Aurora ( /products/amazon-aurora-reviews ) provides up to fifteen to sixteen read replicas. It replicates data across multiple Availability Zones, ensuring high availability and geographical redundancy, which can be considered a GR instead of a DR. As a managed service, maintenance tasks like backup and restore are handled by AWS ( /products/amazon-aws-reviews ), saving my organization significant time and money. Additionally, its fast cloning feature allows us to create a new clone from a large database swiftly, similar to a zero-copy cloning feature in Snowflake ( /products/snowflake-reviews ). This makes Amazon Aurora a compelling choice for my organization.

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Henry Rivera

Solutions Architect at 3t Solutions

Used to support websites and reduces the configuration and maintenance of the database

The solution's initial setup is complex. You have to understand networking when filling out a form to create your RDS. You have to understand a few things. They've made some steps to make it easier, but the person who creates the RDS has to make some irrevocable decisions. They can't be configured afterward. The person who utilizes it has to understand a few things, like networking security and database engines. The solution's deployment has a learning curve, and you have to do it a couple of times to understand exactly what it is and what you want. The deployment is pretty fast and straightforward once you understand the parameters of what you're trying to deploy. Understanding what you're doing probably takes the longest part. If you make any mistakes, you might have to redo it or configure it differently. It's great for those who can afford it. In my business practice, I make sure I can afford a test sandbox so that my mistakes don't impact production. I vet it all out in a different environment before I touch production.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature is that the maintainability is offloaded to the service provider. I don't have to maintain a database or do any administrative tasks, which comes in handy."

"One of the most valuable features is storage scaling."

"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."

"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."

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

"The solution’s scalability is good since we don’t need to take a maintenance window during unpredictable workloads. I like the solution’s behind-the-scenes happenings. It is a great feature."

"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."

"The provision of custom read and write endpoints eliminates the need for managing a separate proxy load balancer."

More Amazon Aurora pros

"The solution reduces the configuration and maintenance of the database."

"The scalability and cost-effectiveness of AWS were beneficial during spikes in database usage, as it allowed our platform to adjust and remain operational."

"The product's initial setup phase is simple and straightforward."

"The solution is easy to manage."

Cons

"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 would like to see more AI-related features in future releases."

"The product's distributed query process for MySQL needs improvement."

"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."

"I would like to see performance insights on the database based on the queries. Currently, we use SolarWinds as the monitoring tool. I would like to leverage SolarWinds’ performance insights in AWS services. SolarWinds gives larger insights when we run performance issues."

"It would have been helpful if they had provided some benchmarking numbers."

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

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

More Amazon Aurora cons

"If our database is too big, we sometimes face glitches in it."

"The tool should include features to clone the RDS instances and have more central management for a lot of RDSs, not just every instance."

"I find the pricing to be expensive."

"I would like to see some improvements in its version upgrades because its upgrade from MySQL 5.7 to MySQL 8 was not straightforward."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is an expensive solution."

"The price could be lower compared to its competitors."

"It is quite expensive."

"There is no need to buy a license for the product. We can pay as per the use case."

"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."

"Amazon RDS on Outposts is expensive compared to other solutions."

"The solution can get expensive fast."

"The licenses are included with the subscription my company purchases from Amazon."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

27%

Computer Software Company

14%

Government

Manufacturing Company

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon Aurora?

Amazon Aurora is not very expensive as other solutions with similar features from other vendors come at almost the same cost. I rated it as two to three on a scale where ten is very expensive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Amazon Aurora?

Amazon Aurora should upgrade its base PostgreSQL ( /products/postgresql-reviews ) versions more frequently and offer all PostgreSQL extensions. Keeping extensions up-to-date with PostgreSQL release...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon RDS on Outposts?

The pricing is high compared to other solutions. AWS support is beneficial yet hard to reach. I rate the pricing as eight out of ten.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Amazon RDS on Outposts?

I find the pricing to be expensive. I have had issues with support from AWS, as I am often directed to documentation instead of speaking directly to someone, which can be time-consuming. Better sup...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Amazon RDS on Outposts?

I am building servers for SaaS applications.

See all answers

Comparisons

SQL Server vs Amazon Aurora

Compared 31% of the time

Oracle Database vs Amazon Aurora

Compared 21% of the time

MariaDB vs Amazon Aurora

Compared 7% of the time

Citus Data vs Amazon Aurora

Compared 7% of the time

YugabyteDB vs Amazon Aurora

Compared 7% of the time

More Amazon Aurora Competitors

No data available

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Aurora

June 2025

Download Amazon Aurora product report

Buyer's Guide

Relational Databases Tools

June 2025

Download Amazon RDS on Outposts product report

Overview

Amazon Aurora is a MySQL and PostgreSQL-compatible relational database built for the cloud, that combines the performance and availability of traditional enterprise databases with the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of open source databases.

Amazon Aurora is up to five times faster than standard MySQL databases and three times faster than standard PostgreSQL databases. It provides the security, availability, and reliability of commercial databases at 1/10th the cost. Amazon Aurora is fully managed by Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS), which automates time-consuming administration tasks like hardware provisioning, database setup, patching, and backups.

Amazon Aurora features a distributed, fault-tolerant, self-healing storage system that auto-scales up to 64TB per database instance. It delivers high performance and availability with up to 15 low-latency read replicas, point-in-time recovery, continuous backup to Amazon S3, and replication across three Availability Zones (AZs).

Visit the Amazon RDS Management Console to create your first Aurora database instance and start migrating your MySQL and PostgreSQL databases.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Amazon RDS on Outposts extends AWS cloud benefits to on-premises setups, offering seamless database management with low latency. It's tailored for users requiring consistent infrastructure technologies both on-premises and in the cloud.

Designed to provide managed database services using the familiar AWS ecosystem, Amazon RDS on Outposts supports popular databases such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQL Server. It delivers the same AWS APIs, functionalities, and tools for a unified experience. This setup is ideal for latency-sensitive applications that need to remain on-site yet benefit from the scalability, reliability, and automation of managed services.

What features define Amazon RDS on Outposts?

Seamless Integration: Supports consistent AWS tools and interfaces, enabling easy management of database activities.
Automated Patch Management: Reduces downtime risks and maintenance efforts by automating software patching.
Security Compliance: Offers data encryption at rest and in transit, ensuring robust data protection.
Backup Automation: Facilitates reliable data recovery through automatic, user-defined backups.

What benefits should users consider in reviews?

Improved Latency: Enhanced application performance as databases are hosted physically closer to user premises.
Operational Efficiency: Simplified database management allows teams to focus on development rather than maintenance.
Cost Management: Pay-as-you-go pricing model reduces financial surprises, aligning expenditure with actual usage.
Enhanced Security: Bolsters compliance and data protection with managed security protocols.

Industries like finance and healthcare implement Amazon RDS on Outposts to manage data-sensitive operations efficiently. Banks use it for secure, low-latency transaction processing while healthcare providers benefit from compliant and reliable patient data management.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Sample Customers

Dow Jones, Arizona State University, Verizon, Capital One, United Nations, Nielsen, Autodesk, Fanduel

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Aurora vs. Amazon RDS on Outposts

June 2025

Free Report: Amazon Aurora vs. Amazon RDS on Outposts

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