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Amazon Aurora vs IBM Db2 Database 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
5.0
Switching to Amazon Aurora saves costs nearly 30% over RDS while improving performance, reliability, and manpower efficiency by 50%.
Sentiment score
5.8
IBM Db2 Database offers high ROI with enhanced efficiency and performance, despite initial costs, supporting seamless business projects.
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 offers varying support quality; enterprise users get prompt help, while free trial users experience limited assistance.
Sentiment score
6.4
IBM Db2 support is generally reliable yet requires speed improvements; users find response times and expertise occasionally lacking.
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
We normally receive substantial discounts on the price.
Associate Director, Data Architecture at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
The reason for limitations in customer service is that the technical skills available in the market for IBM Db2 Database are limited compared to those of Oracle.
Founder, Director at perfTech Solutions Pvt Ltd
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
Amazon Aurora excels in scalability, seamlessly auto-scaling for dynamic environments, though AWS's pricing model has limitations.
Sentiment score
7.2
IBM Db2 excels in scalability for large companies but faces challenges with horizontal scaling and increasing costs.
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
It can be scaled vertically or horizontally so that data insertions and data access are much faster and more secure compared to how Oracle or other databases work.
Founder, Director at perfTech Solutions Pvt Ltd
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
Amazon Aurora is stable with occasional minor issues, offering high availability and reliability for MySQL and PostgreSQL engines.
Sentiment score
7.8
IBM Db2 Database is highly rated for stability and reliability, though performance can dip with significant data growth.
I would rate the stability of Amazon Aurora as a nine out of ten.
Principal Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
It offers a stable environment, ensuring consistent performance.
Associate Vice President - Database Management (Principal Solutions Architect) at Northbay
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon Aurora users seek better pricing, expanded support, smoother migrations, and improvements in performance, scalability, and developer resources.
IBM Db2 Database needs usability, integration, and cloud improvements, plus better licensing, analytics, security, and standardization tools.
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
There are technical challenges, such as the inability to provision the database using a PostgreSQL snapshot directly.
Digital Services & Engagement Senior Manager at AXA
Understanding the basic structure of the database, how logs or log shipping happens, how clustering works, how logs are written, where all information is stored, and how it needs to be taken care of are all critical pieces of information.
Founder, Director at perfTech Solutions Pvt Ltd
It might be slightly slower than other database vendors, but it works well since banks typically do not move quickly with leading-edge technology.
Associate Director, Data Architecture at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
 

Setup Cost

Amazon Aurora provides flexible, cost-effective pricing with notable performance benefits, though some consider it expensive compared to self-managed solutions.
IBM Db2 pricing is complex and expensive, especially in Africa and the Middle East, but offers robust features.
The pricing for Amazon Aurora is different from DocumentDB because DocumentDB is cheaper.
Data & Solution Archtect at Enkel
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
 

Valuable Features

Amazon Aurora offers automated maintenance, high scalability, and compatibility, ideal for diverse databases and efficient FinOps management.
IBM Db2 Database offers SQL, Java integration, scalability, security, and seamless IBM integration for flexible, reliable enterprise applications.
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
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
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
All compliance-related aspects have been taken care of from the database point of view, including database encryption and security-related features.
Founder, Director at perfTech Solutions Pvt Ltd
The IBM Db2 Database brought benefits to my organization as we did not spend too much money on security.
Network Administrator at GAEB
IBM Db2 Database, because of enterprise performance and support, is why banks still maintain their relationship with it.
Associate Director, Data Architecture at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon Aurora
Ranking in Relational Databases Tools
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
Database Management Systems (DBMS) (6th)
IBM Db2 Database
Ranking in Relational Databases Tools
7th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
76
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Relational Databases Tools category, the mindshare of Amazon Aurora is 3.2%, up from 3.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Db2 Database is 6.3%, down from 6.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Relational Databases Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Amazon Aurora3.2%
IBM Db2 Database6.3%
Other90.5%
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.
reviewer2708292 - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Director, Data Architecture at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Support improves setup and maintenance while pricing influences decision
If you have a similar use case and the same deal with IBM as our company, it is definitely a good option and choice. The company I work with has more than 50,000 people and more than 500 support staff. We are not locked into one database vendor. We typically work with multiple database vendors simultaneously, selecting the top choice based on the deals we make and other considerations. We do not use IBM Db2 Database related to AI at this moment because our AI project PLC is still very small scale. We may consider it in the future if we have enough scale. Overall rating for IBM Db2 Database is 8.5 out of 10.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
University
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Retailer
6%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

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 Business21
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise48
 

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?
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 primary use case for Amazon Aurora?
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 dat...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Db2 Database?
IBM Db2 is an expensive solution. While I am not heavily involved with pricing, additional companies provide capabilities or products like those from BMC, which many installations might also purchase.
What needs improvement with IBM Db2 Database?
The IBM Db2 Database is a good solution, but now there is a high maintenance charge. The IBM Db2 Database needs improved support, and there are many difficulties in using it. We tend to use the clo...
What is your primary use case for IBM Db2 Database?
I use the IBM Db2 Database for development applications. Many clients in our company have business applications currently working on it.
 

Also Known As

No data available
DB2
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Dow Jones, Arizona State University, Verizon, Capital One, United Nations, Nielsen, Autodesk, Fanduel
Knorr-Bremse, Mizuho Bank Ltd., Australian Government Department of Defence, SCHWENK Zement, Friedhelm Loh Group, YAZAKI Europe Limited, Ekornes ASA, Baldor Electric, VSN Systemen BV, Lion Brewery (Ceylon) PLC, PLANSEE Group, TE Connectivity, Hansgrohe SE, Openmatics, University of Toronto
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Aurora vs. IBM Db2 Database and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.