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Amazon Aurora vs SQL Server 2014 Express comparison

 

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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
5.0
Users switching to Amazon Aurora reduced costs by 30%, improved performance, and saved $60,000 yearly, enhancing efficiency.
Sentiment score
7.2
SQL Server 2014 Express boosted ROI with cost savings and efficiency by enhancing performance, reducing costs, and improving data handling.
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
After migrating to SQL Server 2014 Express, the use of Power BI reports has drastically improved performance; for instance, a report that took 20 minutes to refresh in Excel now takes only a few seconds with the direct connection to SQL Server 2014 Express.
Manager - Projects at Cognizant
Since SQL Server 2014 Express is free, it helped save software licensing costs while still providing reliable database functionality.
Operations Analyst at a non-profit with 51-200 employees
I have definitely seen a return on investment with SQL Server 2014 Express, particularly in terms of time savings.
Specialist software engineer at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
5.6
Amazon Aurora customer service varies, with effective support for high-tier plans but limited help for non-business users.
Sentiment score
6.3
SQL Server 2014 Express users leverage community resources and forums with praised support when direct assistance is needed.
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
Enterprise-level support is available only with the paid edition.
Senior Rpa Consultant at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Microsoft responds effectively when I face issues.
Senior Consultant at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Since SQL Server 2014 Express is widely used, there are many helpful community resources available online, including Microsoft documentation, forums, and developer communities.
Operations Analyst at a non-profit with 51-200 employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
Amazon Aurora's exceptional scalability effortlessly handles large data volumes, ensuring high performance and growth with minimal operational disruptions.
Sentiment score
6.5
SQL Server 2014 Express excels in cost-effective lightweight applications but faces scalability limitations with larger data environments.
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
SQL Server 2014 Express is fast, but it is not perfectly scalable because it provides only 10 GB per database size.
Database developer at a university with 501-1,000 employees
It operates quickly when managing less than 50 GB of data.
Senior Consultant at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
The Express edition has limits on the database size, memory, and CPU usage.
Operations Analyst at a non-profit with 51-200 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
Amazon Aurora is stable and reliable, with high user ratings and effective management of MySQL and PostgreSQL availability.
Sentiment score
8.6
SQL Server 2014 Express is stable and reliable for small to medium workloads, excelling in read/write operations with minimal downtime.
It offers a stable environment, ensuring consistent performance.
Associate Vice President - Database Management (Principal Solutions Architect) at Northbay
I would rate the stability of Amazon Aurora as a nine out of ten.
Principal Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
In my experience, it runs reliably with minimal downtime when properly configured.
Senior Rpa Consultant at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
It is completely free and has a rich feature set.
Database developer at a university with 501-1,000 employees
SQL Server 2014 Express was quite stable and reliable for day-to-day operations.
Operations Analyst at a non-profit with 51-200 employees
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon Aurora needs improved pricing, performance, scalability, developer features, documentation, compatibility, integration, and regular updates for user satisfaction.
SQL Server 2014 Express needs scalability, modern features, improved interface, and updated tools for better performance and user experience.
There are technical challenges, such as the inability to provision the database using a PostgreSQL snapshot directly.
Digital Services & Engagement Senior Manager at AXA
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
My suggestion is that we could have a way where multiple windows can be open at a time so that we can switch between and access them and help us create the stored procedures in a much better way while comparing.
Technical Lead at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
For enterprise-level and modern high-performance applications, newer SQL Server versions are more suitable.
Quality Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
It is not suitable for enterprise scale due to the restrictions on high volume or mission-critical enterprise workloads.
Senior Rpa Consultant at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
 

Setup Cost

Amazon Aurora's pricing is justified by its speed and features, with costs based on memory, storage, and usage.
SQL Server 2014 Express offers a free solution for small projects but may involve costs for setup, storage, and support.
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
The pricing for Amazon Aurora is different from DocumentDB because DocumentDB is cheaper.
Data & Solution Archtect at Enkel
My experience with pricing and licensing was positive because SQL Server 2014 Express is free to use, which made it very cost-effective for small projects and internal applications.
Operations Analyst at a non-profit with 51-200 employees
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for SQL Server 2014 Express was that licensing was set up by one of my IT team members, but it was very smooth.
Technical Lead at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Valuable Features

Amazon Aurora offers high performance, auto-scaling, AWS integration, with MySQL/PostgreSQL compatibility and managed architecture for efficient database management.
SQL Server 2014 Express is free, lightweight, and enhances performance, ideal for budget-conscious organizations needing efficient database management.
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
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
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
The best features of SQL Server 2014 Express are that it can be downloaded, it is open source, can be downloaded on any desktop, and it is a free version with no charge for downloads, making it highly useful for students and developers building applications for standalone or enterprise applications.
Associate Technology Consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
The best features SQL Server 2014 Express offers are that it is free and perfect for students.
Database developer at a university with 501-1,000 employees
We can store all our data inside a particular database and group it, ensuring that each project has its own SQL database without overlapping with others.
Senior Consultant at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon Aurora
Ranking in Relational Databases Tools
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
Database Management Systems (DBMS) (6th)
SQL Server 2014 Express
Ranking in Relational Databases Tools
9th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Relational Databases Tools category, the mindshare of Amazon Aurora is 3.2%, up from 2.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SQL Server 2014 Express is 0.4%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Relational Databases Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Amazon Aurora3.2%
SQL Server 2014 Express0.4%
Other96.4%
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.
Shubham-Agarwal - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager - Projects at Cognizant
Migration to structured data has improved security and performance and enables faster insights
SQL Server 2014 Express could be improved by addressing its data limitations, especially for users with larger datasets that may not be suitable for production environments. Compared to the Enterprise or Standard versions, SQL Server 2014 Express does not provide the same functionalities or performance, so organizations with rapidly growing data should seek those options instead. Regarding needed improvements, I can say that integration with various ETL tools is essential, as we often need to use SSIS or other ETL tools to pull and transform data. It would be greatly beneficial if SQL Server 2014 Express could include functionality to integrate directly with APIs or other databases rather than relying on external ETL tools.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Healthcare Company
11%
University
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction Company
28%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Healthcare Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
 

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 Business2
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise14
 

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 SQL Server 2014 Express?
SQL Server 2014 Express can be improved in terms of scalability, as it has CPU and memory restrictions and a 10 GB limit for the free version, which can lead to performance issues as the organizati...
What is your primary use case for SQL Server 2014 Express?
The main use case for SQL Server 2014 Express is to create the database architecture for my work and during SQL Server 2014 Express interactions, which adds to my code level. I use Entity Framework...
What advice do you have for others considering SQL Server 2014 Express?
My advice to others considering SQL Server 2014 Express is that for small businesses, it is suitable for inventory tracking, simple reporting, product development, and test environments because it ...
 

Comparisons

No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Dow Jones, Arizona State University, Verizon, Capital One, United Nations, Nielsen, Autodesk, Fanduel
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Aurora vs. SQL Server 2014 Express and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.