Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Amazon Aurora VS PostgreSQL

Compare Amazon Aurora VS 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.

PostgreSQL logo PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL is a powerful, open source object-relational database system.
  • Amazon Aurora Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-03-17
  • PostgreSQL Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-21

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.

PostgreSQL features and specs

  • Open Source
    PostgreSQL is an open-source database management system, which means it is free to use, modify, and distribute. This reduces the cost of database management for individuals and organizations.
  • ACID Compliance
    PostgreSQL is fully ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability) compliant, ensuring reliable transactions and data integrity.
  • Extensible
    PostgreSQL is highly extensible, allowing users to add custom functions, data types, and operators. This enables tailored solutions to specific requirements.
  • Advanced SQL Features
    PostgreSQL supports advanced SQL features like full-text search, JSON and XML data types, and complex queries, providing powerful tools for database operations.
  • Community Support
    There is a strong and active community around PostgreSQL, offering extensive documentation, forums, and collaborative support, which aids troubleshooting and development.
  • Multiple Indexing Techniques
    PostgreSQL offers a variety of indexing techniques such as B-tree, GIN, GiST, and BRIN, allowing for optimized query performance on various data types.
  • Cross-Platform Availability
    PostgreSQL runs on all major operating systems (Windows, MacOS, Linux, Unix), giving flexibility in deployment and development environments.

Possible disadvantages of PostgreSQL

  • Complex Configuration
    Setting up and configuring PostgreSQL can be complex and time-consuming, especially for beginners, requiring a good understanding of its parameters and best practices.
  • Heavy Resource Consumption
    PostgreSQL can be resource-intensive, consuming significant CPU and memory compared to other database systems, which may affect performance on lower-end hardware.
  • Backup and Restore Process
    The backup and restore process in PostgreSQL is not as straightforward as in some other database systems, requiring more manual intervention and understanding of tools like pg_dump and pg_restore.
  • Replication Complexity
    While PostgreSQL supports replication, setting it up can be more complex than some other databases. Advanced configurations like multi-master replication can be particularly challenging.
  • Steeper Learning Curve
    Due to its advanced features and extensive capabilities, PostgreSQL can have a steeper learning curve, making it harder for new users to get started compared to simpler database systems.
  • Less Third-Party Tool Support
    PostgreSQL has less support from third-party tools compared to more widely adopted databases like MySQL, which can limit options for auxiliary functions like administration, monitoring, and development.

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

PostgreSQL videos

Comparison of PostgreSQL and MongoDB

More videos:

  • Review - PostgreSQL Review
  • Review - MySQL vs PostgreSQL - Why you shouldn't use MySQL

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Amazon Aurora and PostgreSQL)
Databases
20 20%
80% 80
Relational Databases
22 22%
78% 78
NoSQL Databases
18 18%
82% 82
Tool
24 24%
76% 76

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Amazon Aurora and PostgreSQL

Amazon Aurora Reviews

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PostgreSQL Reviews

Data Warehouse Tools
Peliqan acts as a bridge, allowing you to e.g. effortlessly pull your PostgreSQL data into Google Sheets for easy access and analysis using its one-click connector. Additionally, Peliqan’s platform provides a user-friendly environment for data exploration, transformation with Magical SQL, and visualization capabilities, all without needing to switch between multiple tools.
Source: peliqan.io
Top 5 BigQuery Alternatives: A Challenge of Complexity
For over three decades, the open-source object-relational database system PostgreSQL has maintained its reputation as a top SQL server due to its features, performance, and reliability. (Heck, Redshift is even based on Postgres!) It's the go-to database solution for large corporations and organizations across a variety of industries from ecommerce to gaming to...
Source: blog.panoply.io
10 Best Database Management Software Of 2022 [+ Examples]
Applications Manager offers out-of-the-box health and performance monitoring for 20 popular databases including RDBMS, NoSQL, in-memory, distributed, and big data stores. It supports both commercial databases such as Oracle, Microsoft SQL, IBM DB2, and MongoDB as well as open source ones like MySQL and PostgreSQL.
Source: theqalead.com
ClickHouse vs TimescaleDB
Recently, TimescaleDB published a blog comparing ClickHouse & TimescaleDB using timescale/tsbs, a timeseries benchmarking framework. I have some experience with PostgreSQL and ClickHouse but never got the chance to play with TimescaleDB. Some of the claims about TimescaleDB made in their post are very bold, that made me even more curious. I thought it’d be a great...
9 Best MongoDB alternatives in 2019
PostgreSQL is a widely popular open source database management system. It provides support for both SQL for relational and JSON for non-relational queries.
Source: www.guru99.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Amazon Aurora might be a bit more popular than PostgreSQL. We know about 23 links to it since March 2021 and only 16 links to 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 / 23 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 / 9 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
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PostgreSQL mentions (16)

  • Convert insert mutation to upsert
    In this quick post, we’ll walk through implementing an Upsert operation in Hasura using PostgreSQL and GraphQL. - Source: dev.to / 8 months ago
  • Perfect Elixir: Environment Setup
    I’m on MacOS and erlang.org, elixir-lang.org, and postgresql.org all suggest installation via Homebrew, which is a very popular package manager for MacOS. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Rust & MySQL: connect, execute SQL statements and stored procs using crate sqlx.
    According to the documentation, crate sqlx is implemented in Rust, and it's database agnostic: it supports PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite, and MSSQL. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Really tired. Is PostgreSQL even runnable in Windows 10? pgAdmin4 stucks at Loading whatever I try.
    Solution is just downloading and installilng pgAdmin from official pgAdmin homepage version, not the one that is included in the postgresql.org package. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • Why SQL is right for Infrastructure Management
    SQL immediately stands out here because it was designed for making relational algebra, the other side of the Entity-Relationship model, accessible. There are likely more people who know SQL than any programming language (for IaC) or data format you could choose to represent your cloud infrastructure. Many non-programmers know it, as well, such as data scientists, business analysts, accountants, etc, and there is... - Source: dev.to / about 2 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

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

MySQL - The world's most popular open source database

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

Microsoft SQL - Microsoft SQL is a best in class relational database management software that facilitates the database server to provide you a primary function to store and retrieve data.

SAP HANA - SAP HANA is an in-memory, column-oriented, relational database management system.

SQLite - SQLite Home Page

MongoDB - MongoDB (from "humongous") is a scalable, high-performance NoSQL database.