Amazon RDS vs IBM Db2 Database comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and IBM are both solutions in the Relational Databases Tools category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #9 with an average rating of 8.4, while IBM is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.4. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 1.1% mindshare in SQL, compared to IBM’s 6.6% mindshare. Additionally, 98% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 90% of IBM users who would recommend it.

Amazon RDS

Read 58 Amazon RDS reviews

3,594 Views
719 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

IBM Db2 Database

Read 75 IBM Db2 Database reviews

3,607 Views
3,463 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

Amazon RDS

IBM Db2 Database

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Amazon RDS and IBM Db2 Database based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Relational Databases Tools solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon RDS vs. IBM Db2 Database Report (Updated: January 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon RDS vs. IBM Db2 Database

January 2026

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Helped 881,082 peers since 2012

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

2.6

Organizations benefit financially from Amazon RDS's cost-effectiveness, agility, and scalability, despite varying results and AWS expense concerns.

Sentiment score

6.6

IBM Db2 Database offers high ROI with enhanced efficiency and performance, despite initial costs, supporting seamless business projects.

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the Amazon RDS report

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the IBM Db2 Database report

Customer Service

Sentiment score

6.8

Amazon RDS support varies by level and location; premium is efficient, but US standard support often lacks expertise.

Sentiment score

6.5

IBM Db2 support is generally reliable yet requires speed improvements; users find response times and expertise occasionally lacking.

I would rate the support from AWS very high, maybe nine, but it also depends on what kind of support you have signed in your contract, whether the premium support or the standard support.

reviewer2592669

Director Software Engineer at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees

The documentation is quite good.

Kenan Çiftçi

Corporate Database Architect at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

The official AWS technical support for Amazon RDS is helpful, providing 24/7 assistance for all business support cases with tools such as the health dashboard and AWS trusted advisor.

Baqir Sajjad

AWS Architect at Virtual University

For more quotes and insights, download the Amazon RDS report

We normally receive substantial discounts on the price.

reviewer2708292

Associate Director, Data Architecture at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

For more quotes and insights, download the IBM Db2 Database report

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score

7.1

Amazon RDS is praised for its scalability and reliability, though some express minor concerns with large dataset management.

Sentiment score

7.1

IBM Db2 excels in scalability for large companies but faces challenges with horizontal scaling and increasing costs.

Its automated scaling, both in storage and instances, is vital as it eliminates manual interventions.

Samuel Ebite

AICE Graduate at alx_africa

The installation of Amazon RDS is quite easy and quite scalable.

reviewer2592669

Director Software Engineer at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees

Despite being a strong feature, scalability could be improved due to the lack of full functionality in autoscaling.

reviewer2668191

VP engineering at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Amazon RDS report

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the IBM Db2 Database report

Stability Issues

Sentiment score

8.1

Amazon RDS is praised for reliability, performance, and uptime with minimal issues, especially with Multi-AZ enhancing stability.

Sentiment score

7.7

IBM Db2 Database is highly rated for stability and reliability, though performance can dip with significant data growth.

Amazon RDS is very stable when deployed correctly across different zones with the right configurations.

Samuel Ebite

AICE Graduate at alx_africa

It is a stable product overall, with very few issues.

reviewer2668191

VP engineering at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Amazon RDS is quite stable, and the SLAs are sort of 99.98%.

reviewer2592669

Director Software Engineer at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Amazon RDS report

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the IBM Db2 Database report

Room For Improvement

Amazon RDS users seek improvements in security, documentation, scalability, integration, and support, with enhanced customization and cost reduction.

IBM Db2 Database needs usability, integration, and cloud improvements, plus better licensing, analytics, security, and standardization tools.

Right now, Amazon RDS supports MySQL and PostgreSQL, but there are certain other RDS engines that it cannot support yet.

AungKhaing Soe

Senior Solutions Architect at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees

Having native Change Data Capture (CDC) support would be beneficial, allowing for seamless integration with Kafka without relying on external technologies like Debezium.

reviewer2668191

VP engineering at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Simplifying migration for those transitioning from on-premises to cloud environments.

Samuel Ebite

AICE Graduate at alx_africa

For more quotes and insights, download the Amazon RDS report

It might be slightly slower than other database vendors, but it works well since banks typically do not move quickly with leading-edge technology.

reviewer2708292

Associate Director, Data Architecture at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

For more quotes and insights, download the IBM Db2 Database report

Setup Cost

Amazon RDS pricing is usage-dependent and cost-effective, offering savings on admin costs but can be expensive compared to alternatives.

IBM Db2 pricing is complex and expensive, especially in Africa and the Middle East, but offers robust features.

While Azure provides great services, long-term plans on AWS are 20% to 30% cheaper.

Karthikeyan Katkam

AWS Engineer at Neurolov.ai

I find the pricing of Amazon RDS fair, as AWS operates on a pay-for-what-you-use model.

Samuel Ebite

AICE Graduate at alx_africa

I rate the price for Amazon as eight on a scale from one to ten.

Kenan Çiftçi

Corporate Database Architect at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Amazon RDS report

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the IBM Db2 Database report

Valuable Features

Amazon RDS provides scalability, security, and flexibility with multi-engine support and simplified operations for diverse applications.

IBM Db2 Database offers SQL, Java integration, scalability, security, and seamless IBM integration for flexible, reliable enterprise applications.

Database management is effective in Amazon RDS because it offers automated backups, high availability, read replicas, and support from multiple database engineers, while also providing security, monitoring and metrics, scalability.

Baqir Sajjad

AWS Architect at Virtual University

High availability is a basic fundamental architecture requirement. Multi-AZ automatically complies with that requirement, so that is a very helpful and useful feature.

AungKhaing Soe

Senior Solutions Architect at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees

In some cases, we are using the read replica feature, and it does improve our application performance because we do not allow any downstream system to come to the main storage or main databases and perform a query.

reviewer2592669

Director Software Engineer at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Amazon RDS report

IBM Db2 Database, because of enterprise performance and support, is why banks still maintain their relationship with it.

reviewer2708292

Associate Director, Data Architecture at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

The IBM Db2 Database is trusted, and IT effort is less than any other product.

Mona Mohamed

Network Administrator at GAEB

For more quotes and insights, download the IBM Db2 Database report

Categories and Ranking

Amazon RDS

Ranking in Relational Databases Tools

9th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Database as a Service (DBaaS) (2nd)

IBM Db2 Database

Ranking in Relational Databases Tools

5th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Relational Databases Tools category, the mindshare of Amazon RDS is 1.1%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Db2 Database is 6.6%, down from 6.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Relational Databases Tools Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
IBM Db2 Database	6.6%
Amazon RDS	1.1%
Other	92.3%

Relational Databases Tools

Featured Reviews

reviewer2592669

Director Software Engineer at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees

Positive experiences with database services, with minor room for feature enhancements observed

I don't really see any disadvantages of Amazon RDS. With Oracle, I think AWS doesn't provide the RAC stability. If you have Oracle installed in your own data centers, you can set up various clusters and we can set up the RACs, but in Amazon RDS, we cannot have the RAC feature of Oracle. They could add that feature. Amazon RDS has limitations regarding RAC. If we talk about installing Oracle in RDS, we cannot have the RAC, but if you deploy Oracle on GCP, then there is probably the RAC feature available. I observed that around two or three years back, but I'm not sure whether they have added the RAC feature in AWS. Amazon RDS is expensive compared to GCP. GCP also has the same features, and although it is quite extensive and feature-rich, I see Amazon RDS as slightly expensive compared to other clouds.

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reviewer2708292

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

No data available

Financial Services Firm

19%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	22
Midsize Enterprise	15
Large Enterprise	23

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	20
Midsize Enterprise	13
Large Enterprise	48

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon RDS?

The product's installation phase is easy.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon RDS?

The pricing for Amazon RDS is reasonable.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Amazon RDS?

Currently, I cannot think of any major improvements. Perhaps more platforms in terms of database engine versions would be beneficial. Right now, Amazon RDS supports MySQL and PostgreSQL, but there ...

See all answers

What do you like most about IBM Db2 Database?

Db2 database scalability and performance capabilities match our database needs. It covers pretty much everything a database administrator or engineer might need.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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...

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Comparisons

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Compared 20% of the time

Google Cloud SQL vs Amazon RDS

Compared 15% of the time

Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs Amazon RDS

Compared 13% of the time

Oracle Database as a Service vs Amazon RDS

Compared 12% of the time

Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer vs Amazon RDS

Compared 5% of the time

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SQL Server vs IBM Db2 Database

Compared 40% of the time

Oracle Database vs IBM Db2 Database

Compared 17% of the time

SAP HANA vs IBM Db2 Database

Compared 9% of the time

Teradata vs IBM Db2 Database

Compared 9% of the time

MySQL vs IBM Db2 Database

Compared 5% of the time

More IBM Db2 Database Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon RDS

January 2026

Download Amazon RDS product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Db2 Database

January 2026

Download IBM Db2 Database product report

Also Known As

RDS

DB2

Overview

Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) is a web service that makes it easier to set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud. It provides cost-efficient, resizeable capacity for an industry-standard relational database and manages common database administration tasks.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

DB2 Enterprise for Linux, UNIX, and Windows is the ideal data server for the most demanding workloads. New XML support is designed to help firms minimize the time and effort it takes to persist and use their XML data reducing development costs and improving business agility.

IBM

Sample Customers

Edmodo

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

Buyer's Guide

Amazon RDS vs. IBM Db2 Database

January 2026

Free Report: Amazon RDS vs. IBM Db2 Database

Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon RDS vs. IBM Db2 Database and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.

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