Amazon Aurora vs Citus Data comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Citus Data are both solutions in the Relational Databases Tools category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.5, while Citus Data is ranked #21 with an average rating of 7.5. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 2.9% mindshare in SQL, compared to Citus Data’s 2.5% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Citus Data users who would recommend it.

Amazon Aurora

Read 20 Amazon Aurora reviews

2,225 Views
2,181 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Citus Data

Read 3 Citus Data reviews

1,303 Views
1,225 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Amazon Aurora

Citus Data

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

Citus Data and Amazon Aurora compete in the database management systems category, with Amazon Aurora having a slight edge due to its extensive feature set.

Features: Citus Data utilizes PostgreSQL to enable horizontal scaling, focusing on distributed database capabilities for real-time analytics. It manages workload spikes effectively and provides sharding features. Amazon Aurora emphasizes high availability and automated scaling, targeting businesses that need cloud integration and high reliability.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Citus Data ensures a straightforward deployment process with extensive support for enterprises handling complex data. Amazon Aurora offers a cloud-first deployment approach that eases provisioning and management, although it may require more initial learning. Its customer service effectively supports extensive cloud solutions.

Pricing and ROI: Citus Data is competitively priced with a lower entry cost and potential for significant ROI, particularly for users utilizing advanced sharding. Amazon Aurora, though initially more expensive, justifies its price through superior scalability and integration features, offering considerable long-term ROI, especially for organizations leveraging extensive cloud services.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon Aurora vs. Citus Data Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Aurora vs. Citus Data

July 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

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Citus Data

Ranking in Relational Databases Tools

21st

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Relational Databases Tools category, the mindshare of Amazon Aurora is 2.9%, down from 4.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Citus Data is 2.5%, up from 1.3% 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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Arucy Lionel

Co-Founder at Afriziki

Efficiently handles high-traffic scenarios and compatible with PostgreSQL extensions, offering flexibility in database management

There are many areas of improvement , especially in terms of DDL query routing. Even though it's masterless, DDL queries need to be sent to the coordinator node. Also, setting up a multi-node environment could be more straightforward. Currently, setting up a multi-node environment is challenging. It's a bit tricky. Installation on each PostgreSQL node can lead to communication issues between nodes. An automatic rebalancing feature would be a significant improvement. Currently, I have to manually command the rebalance. It would be more convenient if it was rebalanced automatically. The dashboard and monitoring capabilities are good, but it would be helpful to have an integrated availability dashboard.

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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 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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

More Amazon Aurora pros

"Its distributed processing capabilities are a standout feature. It requires minimal changes to get up and running if you already have a system on PostgreSQL. Citus can run in its natural state."

"You can use Citus Data to write complex scripts. I like its version upgrades and disaster recovery as well."

"It's very straightforward to implement the solution. It took us two days to set up everything."

Cons

"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."

"There are tuning challenges."

"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."

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

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

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

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

"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."

More Amazon Aurora cons

"There are many areas of improvement , especially in terms of DDL query routing. Even though it's masterless, DDL queries need to be sent to the coordinator node. Also, setting up a multi-node environment could be more straightforward."

"More features in monitoring and the reporting could make it better."

"Citus Data needs to improve its stability. Do not consider this product if you have the budget. It is still developing and has a lot of issues."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is an expensive solution."

"I would rate the pricing a six out of ten, with ten being expensive."

"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."

"The tool’s pricing depends on the instance type. For cost optimization purposes, we use the result instance category."

"It is quite expensive."

"Citus Data is an open-source product."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

25%

Computer Software Company

16%

Government

Healthcare Company

Computer Software Company

20%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

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.

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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...

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What do you like most about Citus Data?

You can use Citus Data to write complex scripts. I like its version upgrades and disaster recovery as well.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Citus Data?

Citus Data needs to improve its stability. Do not consider this product if you have the budget. It is still developing and has a lot of issues.

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Citus Data?

I rate the product a seven out of ten.

See all answers

Comparisons

SQL Server vs Amazon Aurora

Compared 26% of the time

Oracle Database vs Amazon Aurora

Compared 18% of the time

MariaDB vs Amazon Aurora

Compared 8% of the time

YugabyteDB vs Amazon Aurora

Compared 7% of the time

CockroachDB vs Amazon Aurora

Compared 5% of the time

More Amazon Aurora Competitors

CockroachDB vs Citus Data

Compared 26% of the time

YugabyteDB vs Citus Data

Compared 22% of the time

Neon vs Citus Data

Compared 15% of the time

SQL Server vs Citus Data

Compared 6% of the time

MySQL vs Citus Data

Compared 5% of the time

More Citus Data Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Aurora

July 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Relational Databases Tools

July 2025

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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)

Citus is a distributed database that extends PostgreSQL, allowing you to continue using all the powerful Postgres features while still scaling.

Whether you're running into a ceiling on a single node, or need more performance for real-time analytical queries Citus can help.

Citus Data

Sample Customers

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

Cloud Flare, Agari, Mix Rank, Heap

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Aurora vs. Citus Data

July 2025

Free Report: Amazon Aurora vs. Citus Data

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