Amazon Aurora vs LocalDB comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft are both solutions in the Relational Databases Tools category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.5, while Microsoft is ranked #14 with an average rating of 10.0. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 3.0% mindshare in SQL, compared to Microsoft’s 2.3% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

Amazon Aurora

Read 18 Amazon Aurora reviews

2,410 Views
1,575 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

LocalDB

Read 6 LocalDB reviews

1,830 Views
1,336 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Amazon Aurora

LocalDB

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

LocalDB and Amazon Aurora are competing in the database management systems category. Amazon Aurora seems to have the upper hand for high-performance applications due to its scalability and advanced features.

Features: LocalDB is a lightweight, easy-to-use setup ideal for smaller projects and individual developers, supporting simple configurations and offering the same client libraries as its larger counterparts. Amazon Aurora shines with high scalability, providing faster performance and maintenance-free capabilities. It offers automated multi-region fault tolerance and seamless integration with other AWS services.

Room for Improvement: LocalDB could benefit from more advanced features and increased scalability options to cater to larger projects. Enhancing its integration with non-Windows environments would also be advantageous. Amazon Aurora can improve by reducing complexity in deployment and offering clearer cost structures. More user-friendly management interfaces could enhance its already robust features.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: LocalDB's straightforward deployment with minimal setup makes it ideal for quick projects and easy integration within Windows environments. Amazon Aurora, although more complex, offers a detailed deployment experience via AWS, supported by thorough documentation and extensive customer service. Its integration with AWS services facilitates efficient cloud operations.

Pricing and ROI: LocalDB offers a cost-effective solution with minimal setup expenses, serving individual developers and small businesses where high performance is less critical. Meanwhile, Amazon Aurora, despite higher costs, ensures significant ROI through reduced downtime and enhanced operational efficiency. Its pricing caters to organizations investing in scalable infrastructure with long-term benefits in mind.

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

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Aurora vs. LocalDB

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

LocalDB

Ranking in Relational Databases Tools

14th

Average Rating

9.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

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 LocalDB is 2.3%, down from 2.8% 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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Srini-Dhanaraj

Founder & CEO at imfine.club

The database always has structured data, like rows, columns, and bases

LocalDB is an excellent solution for learners, beginners, and projects of negligible size; it is very good. Any startup can use a local database to start. Once they grow beyond its limits, they can migrate to a MS SQL server that's also available on-premises. I rate it ten out of ten.

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 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."

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

"My overall experience with Amazon Aurora is very positive. I rate it ten out of ten for its reliability and efficiency."

"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's features that I find the most beneficial include its database backup strategy, performance options, and input-output operations."

"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."

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

"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."

More Amazon Aurora pros

"The solution is fast."

"The initial setup is very straightforward. The guidelines are very easy to follow. Maintenance is very easy and requires very little manpower."

"The most valuable feature of LocalDBis the connection between the application and DB."

"LocalDB is an excellent solution for learners, beginners, and projects of negligible size; it is very good."

"The initial setup was simple."

Cons

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

"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."

"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."

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

"There are tuning challenges."

"In Oracle, tools like Veridata allow for comparing databases and certifying data accuracy, even offering repair capabilities, which are missing in Aurora. There should be a similar comparison tool in Aurora."

"The pricing could improve. It should be reduced."

More Amazon Aurora cons

"The internal connection features of LocalDB could improve."

"It is only for a small amount of data. Local DB is made for the purpose of small-volume optics."

"The ALM features can be improved, but the database by itself is reliable."

"The solution needs to create a management tool. Right now, the solution has tools for creating a local installation, but it's too simplistic. We need something that's a bit more complex so that we can extend the tools with our scripts."

"The initial setup is complex and requires a skilled person."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

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

"It is an expensive solution."

"It is quite expensive."

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

"The licensing cost is too high for LocalDB."

"The fees are fair."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

27%

Computer Software Company

14%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

13%

Government

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

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 LocalDB?

It's free of cost.

See all answers

What needs improvement with LocalDB?

Technically speaking, you don't need to get any updates because it's not online. It's on-premise. So once it is installed, then you get a desktop-grade version. But the purpose of LocalDB is not th...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for LocalDB?

There were multiple systems, some planned, like the mainframe, the gold database, a website, and a manual Excel spreadsheet. These were the various data sources, and we wanted to bring everything i...

See all answers

Comparisons

SQL Server vs Amazon Aurora

Compared 31% of the time

Oracle Database vs Amazon Aurora

Compared 20% 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

SQL Server vs LocalDB

Compared 79% of the time

MySQL vs LocalDB

Compared 12% of the time

MariaDB vs LocalDB

Compared 5% of the time

Oracle Database In-Memory vs LocalDB

Compared 4% of the time

More LocalDB Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Aurora

June 2025

Download Amazon Aurora product report

Buyer's Guide

Relational Databases Tools

June 2025

Download LocalDB 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)

LocalDB is a lightweight version of the SQL Server Express Database Engine that is targeted for program development. LocalDB starts on demand and runs in user mode, so there is no complex configuration.

Microsoft

Sample Customers

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

AstraZeneca, Kienzle Automotive GmbH, Kodak Alaris, Unilever, Floatel International and Kongsberg Maritime, MyHero

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Aurora vs. LocalDB

June 2025

Free Report: Amazon Aurora vs. LocalDB

Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Aurora vs. LocalDB and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.

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