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AWS Database Migration Service vs Elastic Search comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 3, 2024

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
4.5
Organizations save up to $150,000 annually using AWS Database Migration Service, offering significant cost savings over legacy tools.
Sentiment score
4.0
Elastic Search boosts efficiency, reduces search times, improves security, lowers costs, and enhances product scaling and performance.
I can specify savings of around 40 to 60%.
Delivery Head Data Engineering at BAGIC
We have not purchased any licensed products, and our use of Elastic Search is purely open-source, contributing positively to our ROI.
Software Engineer at Government of India
It is stable, and we do not encounter critical issues like server downtime, which could result in data loss.
SOC A2 at Innodata-ISOGEN
The main benefits observed from using Elastic Search include improvements in operational efficiency, along with cost, time, and resource savings.
Senior Devops Engineer at Ubique Digital LTD
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
5.3
AWS Database Migration Service support is inconsistent, with helpful expertise but often involves delays, budget considerations, or repeated exchanges.
Sentiment score
6.2
Elastic Search's support is praised for expertise and responsiveness, despite occasional delays and suggestions for faster response times.
When working with AWS GovCloud, we often did not get an answer in time because AWS seemed more focused on the commercial side.
Owner at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
I am happy with the technical support from AWS.
Delivery Head Data Engineering at BAGIC
The customer support for Elastic Search is one of the best I have ever tried.
Software Developer at a media company with 10,001+ employees
They have always been really responsible and responsive to my requests.
Security Lead at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees
It has been sufficient to visit conferences such as SCALE in Southern California Linux Expo, where Elastic Search has a booth to talk to their staff.
Principal Scientific Computing Software Engineer at a educational organization with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.8
AWS Database Migration Service is scalable and adaptable, but may face compatibility and latency issues with large data sets.
Sentiment score
7.3
Elasticsearch is highly scalable and efficient, requiring proper infrastructure planning for expanding and managing large datasets successfully.
Even if there was a failure, we could catch it and rerun it.
Software architect at Cognizant
AWS's scalable nature involves a human approach, meaning it is not auto-scalable.
Lead Architect at Fracral
While scalability is good, latency exists due to our business nature.
Delivery Head Data Engineering at BAGIC
We can search through that document quite easily, sometimes in 7 milliseconds, sometimes one or two milliseconds.
Product Engineer at A3L
I would rate its scalability a ten.
Backend Developer
Since we're on the cloud, whenever we need to upgrade or add resources, they handle everything.
Security Lead at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.2
AWS Database Migration Service is reliable and stable, with occasional manual interventions needed for large data volumes or constant migrations.
Sentiment score
7.7
Elastic Search offers strong stability, reliable performance, and efficient scalability across various environments, with occasional configuration needs.
For DMS version upgrades, we schedule downtime during business hours so that midnight workloads are not interrupted and morning business can run smoothly.
Delivery Head Data Engineering at BAGIC
The data transfer sometimes exceeded the bandwidth limits without proper notification, which caused issues.
SOC A2 at Innodata-ISOGEN
The stability of Elasticsearch was very high.
Backend Developer
When you put one keyword, everything related to that keyword in your ecosystem will showcase all the results.
Chief Information Security Officer at CDSL Ventures Limited
 

Room For Improvement

AWS Database Migration Service needs improved functionality, compatibility, monitoring, and documentation to enhance user experience and platform support.
Elastic Search needs cost clarity, improved performance, user experience, configuration simplicity, scalability, documentation, and advanced machine learning features.
DMS works within AWS ecosystem, but they also have to look for third party solutions. Now Snowflake is a bigger player, or Databricks.
Delivery Head Data Engineering at BAGIC
Sometimes, those who implement the service face problems and resolve it, but I may not even know what problems they faced.
Owner at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
From a technical point of view, there are no significant issues recalled as Elastic Search has been absolutely awesome for this use case and covers 100% of the needs.
Principal Scientific Computing Software Engineer at a educational organization with 1,001-5,000 employees
If I need to parse one million records saved into Elastic Search, it becomes a nightmare because I need to do the pagination, and it is very problematic in that regard.
Lead Engineer at Spidersilk
Observability features like search latency, indexing rate, and maybe rejected requests should be added to make the platform more reliable and accessible for everyone.
Senior System Engineer at EPAM Systems
 

Setup Cost

AWS Database Migration Service is cost-effective long-term, with pricing varying by usage, migration complexity, and regional differences.
Elastic Search pricing varies by usage and features, offering flexibility but potential high costs with complex deployments.
On the AWS side, it is very expensive because they charge based on query basis or how much data is transferred in and out, making it very expensive.
Lead Engineer at Spidersilk
Having the hosted solution and not having to pay for essentially a DevOps person on staff to manage makes it affordable.
CTO at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
You can host it on-premises, which would incur zero cost, or take it as a SaaS-based service, where the expenses remain minimal.
Senior Software Engineer at Agoda
 

Valuable Features

AWS Database Migration Service offers scalable, cost-effective migration with easy administration, real-time synchronization, and high data security.
Elastic Search excels in full-text search, scalability, data indexing, visualization, AI features, and integrates well for enterprise solutions.
AWS offers a way to build jobs that are scalable, expandable for new and current tables, and can be deployed quickly.
Lead Architect at Fracral
You can copy the database at first without impacting your current database, and then use CDC to copy incremental changes.
Owner at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
The scalability option is another valuable feature because AWS provides its own compute behind it, so I can scale up and scale down at any given point.
Delivery Head Data Engineering at BAGIC
Elastic Search makes handling large data volumes efficient and supports complex search operations.
Software Engineer at Government of India
The most valuable feature of Elasticsearch was the quick search capability, allowing us to search by any criteria needed.
Backend Developer
The speed with which Elastic Search is able to search through all of the documents we place into it is quite remarkable, as we search through 65 billion documents in less than a second in most cases, on a constant consistent basis.
Director, Software Engineering at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Categories and Ranking

AWS Database Migration Service
Ranking in Cloud Data Integration
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
34
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Elastic Search
Ranking in Cloud Data Integration
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
91
Ranking in other categories
Indexing and Search (1st), Search as a Service (1st), Vector Databases (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Cloud Data Integration category, the mindshare of AWS Database Migration Service is 7.4%, down from 14.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Elastic Search is 1.6%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Data Integration Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
AWS Database Migration Service7.4%
Elastic Search1.6%
Other91.0%
Cloud Data Integration
 

Featured Reviews

AG
Delivery Head Data Engineering at BAGIC
Streamlines data migration across platforms with cost-effective and scalable solutions
We have the continuous data integration feature, but it does not work very well in our given ecosystem because we have huge data volume, and it reads from archive log rather than the redo sequence. That is where it lacks, so we are not able to do continuous streaming data injection. The ability to handle heterogeneous migrations for our organization is adequate. I do not see a major value add, or see it as a marquee feature. It is a good tool, but we do not have that sort of uses requirement. In my 10 plus years of experience, I do not see that kind of requirement where I have to replicate it in real time. I leverage AWS CloudWatch for addressing migration issues. The major challenges come across CDC. We have created latency filter and everything, but there is no way to control it. Due to the nature of our business, the transactions increase during month end and year end. My transactions are supposed to increase, my workloads on my core system increases, but my DMS is not able to keep up with them, even if I increase it to a higher side. Improvements could be made in AWS Database Migration Service. Because of that, I am moving out of DMS now to a STRIIM solution. DMS works within AWS ecosystem, but they also have to look for third party solutions. Now Snowflake is a bigger player, or Databricks. Something that could be possible as a connector, whether paid or free, but giving as a connector to that ecosystem as well.
Anurag Pal - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Search and aggregations have transformed how I manage and visualize complex real estate data
Elastic Search consumes lots of memory. You have to provide the heap size a lot if you want the best out of it. The major problem is when a company wants to use Elastic Search but it is at a startup stage. At a startup stage, there is a lot of funds to consider. However, their use case is that they have to use a pretty significant amount of data. For that, it is very expensive. For example, if you take OLTP-based databases in the current scenario, such as ClickHouse or Iceberg, you can do it on 4GB RAM also. Elastic Search is for analytical records. You have to do the analytics on it. According to me, as far as I have seen, people will start moving from Elastic Search sooner or later. Why? Because it is expensive. Another thing is that there is an open source available for that, such as ClickHouse. Around 2014 and 2012, there was only one competitor at that time, which was Solr. But now, not only is Solr there, but you can take ClickHouse and you have Iceberg also. How are we going to compete with them? There is also a fork of Elastic Search that is OpenSearch. As far as I have seen in lots of articles I am reading, users are using it as the ELK stack for logs and analyzing logs. That is not the exact use case. It can do more than that if used correctly. But as it involves lots of cost, people are shifting from Elastic Search to other sources. When I am talking about pricing, it is not only the server pricing. It is the amount of memory it is using. The pricing is basically the heap Java, which is taking memory. That is the major problem happening here. If we have to run an MVP, a client comes to me and says, "Anurag, we need to do a proof of concept. Can we do it if I can pay a 4GB or 16GB expense?" How can I suggest to them that a minimum of 16GB is needed for Elastic Search so that your proof of concept will be proved? In that case, what I have to suggest from the beginning is to go with Cassandra or at the initial stage, go with PostgreSQL. The problem is the memory it is taking. That is the only thing.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
5%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Retailer
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise17
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business38
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise46
 

Questions from the Community

What resources can you use to learn how to utilize AWS Database Migration Service?
As with all AWS products, you are given very useful documentation with AWS Database Migration Service. Before we started using this product, we went over it and we were able to learn the basics an...
Would you recommend AWS Database Migration Service as a cloud data integration tool?
My current company started using AWS Database Migration Service upon my recommendation, and I continue telling people how good of a product it is. However, users should keep in mind a few things. ...
Is AWS Database Migration Service an affordable solution?
Compared to similar solutions, AWS Database Migration Service falls somewhere in the middle price-wise, at least from my experience. This being said, it is not a very affordable solution, especial...
What do you like most about ELK Elasticsearch?
Logsign provides us with the capability to execute multiple queries according to our requirements. The indexing is very high, making it effective for storing and retrieving logs. The real-time anal...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ELK Elasticsearch?
On the subject of pricing, Elastic Search is very cost-efficient. You can host it on-premises, which would incur zero cost, or take it as a SaaS-based service, where the expenses remain minimal.
What needs improvement with ELK Elasticsearch?
From the UI point of view, we are using most probably Kibana, and I think they can do much better than that. That is something they can fine-tune a little bit, and then it will definitely be a good...
 

Also Known As

AWS Data Migration Service
Elastic Enterprise Search, Swiftype, Elastic Cloud
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Veoci, Trimble, Nasdaq, shaadi.com, Hotelbeds, SysAid, Verizon, Expedia, Pega
T-Mobile, Adobe, Booking.com, BMW, Telegraph Media Group, Cisco, Karbon, Deezer, NORBr, Labelbox, Fingerprint, Relativity, NHS Hospital, Met Office, Proximus, Go1, Mentat, Bluestone Analytics, Humanz, Hutch, Auchan, Sitecore, Linklaters, Socren, Infotrack, Pfizer, Engadget, Airbus, Grab, Vimeo, Ticketmaster, Asana, Twilio, Blizzard, Comcast, RWE and many others.
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Database Migration Service vs. Elastic Search and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
885,376 professionals have used our research since 2012.