Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Amazon Aurora VS Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL

Compare Amazon Aurora VS Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL and see what are their differences

Amazon Aurora logo Amazon Aurora

MySQL and PostgreSQL-compatible relational database built for the cloud. Performance and availability of commercial-grade databases at 1/10th the cost.

Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL logo Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL as a Service
  • Amazon Aurora Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-03-17
  • Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-10-29

Amazon Aurora features and specs

  • High Performance
    Amazon Aurora is designed to provide up to five times the throughput of standard MySQL and three times the throughput of standard PostgreSQL databases.
  • Scalability
    Aurora scales storage automatically, growing from 10GB up to 128TB with no downtime. This automatic scaling makes it ideal for applications with fluctuating workloads.
  • High Availability and Durability
    Aurora automatically replicates six copies of data across three availability zones and continuously backs up data to Amazon S3, ensuring durability.
  • Security
    Aurora offers multiple layers of security including network isolation using Amazon VPC, encryption at rest using keys that you create and control through AWS Key Management Service (KMS), and encryption of data in transit using SSL.
  • Fully Managed
    Aurora is fully managed by AWS, which automates time-consuming administrative tasks such as hardware provisioning, database setup, patching, and backups.
  • Compatibility
    Aurora is compatible with MySQL and PostgreSQL, making it easier to migrate existing applications to Aurora with minimal changes.

Possible disadvantages of Amazon Aurora

  • Cost
    Aurora can be more expensive than traditional RDS instances, particularly for workloads that do not fully utilize its high performance and scalability features.
  • Complexity
    The numerous features and configurations can make Aurora complex to manage and tune, especially for those who are not familiar with AWS services.
  • Vendor Lock-in
    Adopting Aurora ties you into the AWS ecosystem, which can make it difficult to migrate to other cloud providers or on-premises systems.
  • Cold Start Latency
    Aurora Serverless can experience latency during cold starts, which can be problematic for applications requiring instant scalability.
  • Limited to AWS Environment
    Aurora is only available within the AWS environment, which can be limiting if your infrastructure spans multiple cloud providers.

Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL features and specs

  • Managed Service
    Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL is a fully managed service, meaning that AWS handles routine database tasks such as backups, patch management, and failover, reducing the operational burden on users.
  • Scalability
    The service allows for easy vertically scaling of database instances as application demands grow, without requiring downtime. This helps businesses to adapt to changing workloads efficiently.
  • High Availability
    With Multi-AZ deployments, Amazon RDS provides enhanced reliability and availability. It automatically creates a primary database instance and synchronously replicates data to a standby instance in a different Availability Zone.
  • Security Features
    Amazon RDS integrates with AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) for access control and offers encryption at rest and in transit capabilities, bolstering data security.
  • Backup and Recovery
    Automatic backups, snapshots, and point-in-time recovery simplify data recovery and help ensure that data can be restored to any given second during the retention period.

Possible disadvantages of Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL

  • Cost
    The cost of running a managed service like Amazon RDS can be higher than managing a database in-house, especially for smaller organizations or when optimal configurations are not utilized.
  • Limited Customization
    Since Amazon RDS is a managed service, there are certain limitations on access to the underlying operating system and database configurations, which may hinder some advanced customizations and optimizations.
  • Vendor Lock-In
    Using RDS for PostgreSQL can lead to vendor lock-in, making it difficult for businesses to move away from AWS without incurring data transfer costs or requiring significant re-engineering efforts.
  • Maintenance Windows
    Updates and patches are applied during scheduled maintenance windows, which might cause disruptions if the timing is not properly managed or if unexpected performance issues occur during these periods.
  • Limited Extension Support
    While RDS for PostgreSQL supports a wide range of extensions, not all PostgreSQL extensions are available, potentially limiting additional functionality that might be needed for specialized use cases.

Amazon Aurora videos

Introduction to Amazon Aurora - Relational Database Built for the Cloud - AWS

More videos:

  • Review - Amazon Aurora Global Database Deep Dive
  • Review - What's New in Amazon Aurora - AWS Online Tech Talks

Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL videos

Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL/Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL Operational Best Practices | AWS Events

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Amazon Aurora and Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL)
Databases
83 83%
17% 17
Relational Databases
91 91%
9% 9
Cloud Hosting
0 0%
100% 100
NoSQL Databases
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Amazon Aurora might be a bit more popular than Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL. We know about 23 links to it since March 2021 and only 16 links to Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Amazon Aurora mentions (23)

  • Building a RAG System for Video Content Search and Analysis
    Using Amazon Bedrock to invoke Amazon Titan Foundation Models for generating multimodal embeddings, Amazon Transcribe for converting speech to text, and Amazon Aurora postgreSQL for vector storage and similarity search, you can build an application that understands both visual and audio content, enabling natural language queries to find specific moments in videos. - Source: dev.to / 29 days ago
  • Everyone Uses Postgres… But Why?
    Cloud deployment: PostgreSQL can be deployed in the cloud with AWS RDS, Amazon Aurora, Azure Database for PostgreSQL, or Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL. - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • Announcing the public beta for dedicated clusters
    Today, our Postgres databases are Amazon Aurora instances. You can trust that your database will have the scalability, reliability and security that AWS is known for. With dedicated clusters you can configure both the Postgres engine version, cluster class and number of replicas for failover and query distribution. - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
  • Vector database is not a separate database category
    As far as the big players are concerned, Google offers AlloyDB (https://cloud.google.com/alloydb) while Amazon offers Aurora (https://aws.amazon.com/rds/aurora/). - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • Building realtime experiences with Amazon Aurora
    Aurora is a managed database service from Amazon compatible with MySQL and PostgreSQL. It allows for the use of existing MySQL code, tools, and applications and can offer increased performance for certain workloads compared to MySQL and PostgreSQL. - Source: dev.to / almost 2 years ago
View more

Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL mentions (16)

  • Kubernetes and Container Portability: Navigating Multi-Cloud Flexibility
    Amazon RDS for MySQL (for managed MySQL) or Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL (for managed PostgreSQL). - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Top 8 Managed Postgres Providers
    Amazon RDS is a managed service for relational databases that makes PostgreSQL setup, scaling, and management automatic. This lets developers concentrate on creating applications instead of handling database tasks. - Source: dev.to / 9 months ago
  • Deploying Django Application on AWS with Terraform - Part 1
    Yay! We have now deployed our Django web application with ECS Service + Fargate on AWS. But now it works with SQLite file database. This file will be recreated on every service restart. So, our app cannot persist any data for now. In the next article we’ll connect Django to AWS RDS PostgreSQL. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • gactive: Active-active Replication Extension for PostgreSQL on Amazon RDS
    Today, AWS announces the general availability of pgactive: Active-active Replication Extension for PostgreSQL, available for Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) for PostgreSQL. Pgactive lets you use asynchronous active-active replication for streaming data between database instances to provide additional resiliency and flexibility in moving data between database instances, including writers located in... Source: over 1 year ago
  • Hosting my Software
    Best practice would definitely be setting up a separately hosted database (I swear I'm not an AWS shill) for production as this ensures much better data integrity. Plus it manages backups etc. For you. Source: about 2 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Amazon Aurora and Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL, you can also consider the following products

PostgreSQL - PostgreSQL is a powerful, open source object-relational database system.

Application Load Balance - Automatically distribute incoming traffic across multiple targets using an Application Load Balancer.

MySQL - The world's most popular open source database

Neon Database - Postgres made for developers. Easy to Use, Scalable, Cost efficient solution for your next project.

Oracle DBaaS - See how Oracle Database 12c enables businesses to plug into the cloud and power the real-time enterprise.

Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Try Azure Database for PostgreSQL to build reliable and intelligent applications for your organization.