Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Amazon Aurora vs MariaDB 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon Aurora
Ranking in Relational Databases Tools
7th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
MariaDB
Ranking in Relational Databases Tools
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
59
Ranking in other categories
Open Source Databases (4th)
 

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 MariaDB is 6.6%, down from 9.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Relational Databases Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Adnan Shafiq - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
KumarManish - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to deploy, cost-effective, and integrates seamlessly with other products
We had planned for an RDBMS version and not NoSQL. We use MariaDB Galera Cluster. It's a good product. It is cheap, scalable, performs well, and is efficient. We use GCP’s BigQuery for machine learning. We must follow the best practices of the tool. We missed some best practices like the storage engine and InnoDB. It was very difficult to identify why we were having performance issues. Then, we realized that some of our tables were still on MyISAM, the default storage engine. When we switched it back to the InnoDB, it was very smooth. InnoDB is the recommended one. We must follow the best practices given in the documentation during the initial setup. Overall, I rate the product a nine out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"My overall experience with Amazon Aurora is very positive. I rate it ten out of ten for its reliability and efficiency."
"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."
"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 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 features of Amazon Aurora include the global instance with the global writer endpoint, which allows failovers and instance switches without requiring changes in my code, thanks to the default global Route 53 endpoint."
"Aurora's features that I find the most beneficial include its database backup strategy, performance options, and input-output operations."
"One of the standout features of Amazon Aurora is that we do not need to maintain disaster recovery or manage availability zones."
"The provision of custom read and write endpoints eliminates the need for managing a separate proxy load balancer."
"MariaDB is easy to install and is stable and scalable."
"The integration with other products is seamless."
"It's a very easy product to set up."
"We like the easy way that we can collect data from other databases."
"It's open source."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the query speed it offers."
"MariaDB can solve things better than MySQL. Maria DB has better performance than MySQL."
"MariaDB is stable and the initial setup is straightforward."
 

Cons

"One of the most valuable features is storage scaling."
"There are tuning challenges."
"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."
"The pricing could improve. It should be reduced."
"I would like to see more AI-related features in future releases."
"While Amazon Aurora meets your current scaling and storage needs, there is room for improvement in cryptography and scalability compared to other databases."
"It would have been helpful if they had provided some benchmarking numbers."
"The GUI could be improved a bit. The user interface needs to be improved."
"The scaling for database online transactions needs improvement."
"I’m not sure if it can scale."
"MariaDB's GUI is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."
"I would like to see a better user interface which would make the tool less complex."
"Could have more integration with user platforms."
"The ability to create stored procedures in MariaDB is an area where the tool lacks a bit."
"Document caching is an area of concern in the product, where improvements are required to help MariaDB improve on the previous queries as they are retained, and you can roll back to them."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"It is an expensive solution."
"The price could be lower compared to its competitors."
"It is quite expensive."
"The tool’s pricing depends on the instance type. For cost optimization purposes, we use the result instance category."
"This is an open source solution with no licensing fees."
"There is a monthly subscription to use MariaDB."
"The product is not expensive."
"It is free of charge."
"We use the solution's free version."
"I used the open-source version, which is available free of charge."
"It is an open-source solution."
"MariaDB is available for free."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Relational Databases Tools solutions are best for your needs.
859,579 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
27%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
6%
Healthcare Company
5%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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.
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.
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...
What do you like most about MariaDB?
The integration with other products is seamless.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for MariaDB?
I have found the price of commercial MariaDB to be pretty steep, although not as high as Oracle. Customers often prefer the Community Edition because it's free.
What needs improvement with MariaDB?
The only potential area for improvement could be the pricing model, which might benefit from being more flexible or a bit cheaper.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Dow Jones, Arizona State University, Verizon, Capital One, United Nations, Nielsen, Autodesk, Fanduel
Google, Wikipedia, Tencent, Verizon, DBS Bank, Deutsche Bank, Telefónica, Huatai Securities
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Aurora vs. MariaDB and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
859,579 professionals have used our research since 2012.