No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Amazon Aurora vs InterSystems IRIS comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon Aurora
Ranking in Relational Databases Tools
6th
Ranking in Database Management Systems (DBMS)
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
InterSystems IRIS
Ranking in Relational Databases Tools
27th
Ranking in Database Management Systems (DBMS)
15th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
4.5
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Relational Databases Tools category, the mindshare of Amazon Aurora is 3.1%, up from 2.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of InterSystems IRIS is 0.9%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Relational Databases Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Amazon Aurora3.1%
InterSystems IRIS0.9%
Other96.0%
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.
reviewer2892648 - PeerSpot reviewer
Developer/Database Administrator at a transportation company with 201-500 employees
Robust multidimensional database has enabled smooth API integrations and modern data workflows
I think InterSystems IRIS is a continuation of the Caché legacy. Since I have been working with it since 2005 with Caché, I think it is a really amazing tool. It is a very robust and very scalable database. It is very good to work with, and I am already used to working with it. Where it falls a bit short is in the availability of manpower and professionals who work with InterSystems IRIS or Caché. There are few professionals who work with it. Another thing is the cost and the license cost. I think there could be some kind of package that could serve smaller companies and small and medium-sized companies. That would reach a larger slice of the market, because the cost to work with Caché, InterSystems IRIS, and so on is high. I would make this remark about putting together a package and a new product that could serve small and medium-sized companies. The area where InterSystems IRIS falls a bit short is in the cost and the licensing cost. The licensing cost is the main issue I have already mentioned.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"We have seen an increase in customer satisfaction and availability with the switch from RDS to Aurora."
"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 is the ability to do multiple-read and single-write. These are the kinds of features that we were interested in, and Aurora takes care of that natively."
"Cost-wise, switching to Amazon Aurora is beneficial, saving me around $60,000 per year."
"My overall experience with Amazon Aurora is very positive. I rate it ten out of ten for its reliability and efficiency."
"Another advantage is that with AWS handling administration, responsibilities like database provisioning and maintenance are significantly reduced."
"The main benefits my company receives from Amazon Aurora are performance and cost."
"In my opinion, the best features that InterSystems IRIS offers are its very optimized database, which I found amazing, and the observability it provides for checking messages and how the data is being transferred, which I find very interesting."
"My final observation is that everyone should use InterSystems IRIS; it is an amazing tool on the market."
"The best features InterSystems IRIS offers are its powerful database and speed, which contribute greatly to my work."
"The best features InterSystems IRIS offers, in my experience, include being a really powerful engine and a really good database."
"The best features that InterSystems IRIS offers in my opinion are the speed in querying data, and due to our system, which requires a large query with a large volume of data, InterSystems IRIS stands out for its query speed, making my work easier."
"InterSystems IRIS has had a positive impact on my organization by improving performance and data security."
"InterSystems IRIS as a database is very efficient, with its best features being its speed and high performance, along with an easy understanding of its data searching functionalities."
 

Cons

"The product's distributed query process for MySQL needs improvement."
"I would like to see more AI-related features in future releases."
"Sometimes mistakes can be easily made, and people can waste money by mistake if they do not know what they are doing."
"Amazon can make better access levels and reduce costs for Amazon Aurora."
"In my experience, I didn't see the claimed speed, and when you factor in the cost, or the extra cost of Aurora compared to a normal database, it didn't justify the cost from a performance standpoint, but it did justify the cost because we didn't have to have multiple instances, Redis caches, and other things like that."
"A challenge with stability is the lack of long-term log retention."
"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."
"While Amazon Aurora meets your current scaling and storage needs, there is room for improvement in cryptography and scalability compared to other databases."
"I cannot determine a very positive impact or a beneficial result from InterSystems IRIS, although this observability part is important because we were able to find problems much faster."
"InterSystems IRIS can be improved by addressing the lack of libraries, mainly mathematical ones, where we would save a lot of time on some formulas that we have to build by hand every time we need them."
"Python support can be enhanced further, as it's really clunky at the moment, considering that the use of Python is pretty much all over the world and nobody knows ObjectScript really thoroughly and deeply."
"InterSystems IRIS can be improved since its studio is very poor."
"The area where InterSystems IRIS falls a bit short is in the cost and the licensing cost."
 

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."
"The tool’s pricing depends on the instance type. For cost optimization purposes, we use the result instance category."
"I would rate the pricing a six out of ten, with ten being expensive."
Information not available
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Relational Databases Tools solutions are best for your needs.
913,683 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
University
11%
Healthcare Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
29%
Comms Service Provider
18%
Healthcare Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
5%
 

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 Business3
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise2
 

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 InterSystems IRIS?
InterSystems IRIS can be improved by addressing the lack of libraries, mainly mathematical ones, where we would save a lot of time on some formulas that we have to build by hand every time we need ...
What is your primary use case for InterSystems IRIS?
My main use case for InterSystems IRIS is hospital integrations. In hospital integrations, I use InterSystems IRIS for object conversions. Regarding this use case, I utilize TCP/IP, REST, and SOAP ...
What advice do you have for others considering InterSystems IRIS?
My advice to others who are considering using InterSystems IRIS is to use it without fear, take advantage of all the platform's resources, and follow the community that has many tips and solutions ...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Dow Jones, Arizona State University, Verizon, Capital One, United Nations, Nielsen, Autodesk, Fanduel
Global Investment Bank, Parkview Medical Center
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Aurora vs. InterSystems IRIS and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,683 professionals have used our research since 2012.