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Amazon Aurora pros and cons

Vendor: Amazon Web Services (AWS)

4.2 out of 5

21 reviews
100% willing to recommend

Pros & Cons summary

Amazon Aurora provides performance and cost efficiency, offering compatibility with MySQL or PostgreSQL for easier database management. It features auto-scaling, log rolling, and offloaded maintainability to Amazon, reducing operational overhead. While scalability is notable, performance could improve with a reduced cost. Enhancements in access levels, distributed query processing for MySQL, and PostgreSQL extensions are needed. Migration challenges from PostgreSQL RDS exist without direct snapshot provisioning.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Amazon Aurora provides performance and cost efficiency, along with multiple-read and single-write capabilities natively with reduced maintenance requirements.

Its compatibility with MySQL or PostgreSQL simplifies database management and migration processes, avoiding source code changes.

Aurora offers hands-off self-management features like log rolling and auto-scaling, enhancing database operations.

The scalability of Amazon Aurora is notable; it handles scaling up and down efficiently without maintenance windows during unpredictable workloads.

The maintainability is offloaded to Amazon, meaning users don't need to handle database provisioning or administrative tasks, reducing operational overhead.

CONS

Pricing could improve and should be reduced to justify the cost from a performance standpoint.

Access levels could be better and costs reduced for Aurora to enhance value.

Aurora's distributed query process for MySQL requires enhancement for better performance.

Frequent upgrades of base PostgreSQL versions and offering more PostgreSQL extensions would benefit users.

There are challenges during migration from PostgreSQL RDS to Aurora, particularly with the inability to provision using a PostgreSQL snapshot directly.

Amazon Aurora Pros review quotes

SivashankarRajaram

Principal Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

May 4, 2026

The main benefits my company receives from Amazon Aurora are performance and cost.

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SP

Satheesh Papisetty

Digital Services & Engagement Senior Manager at AXA

Mar 6, 2025

My overall experience with Amazon Aurora is very positive. I rate it ten out of ten for its reliability and efficiency.

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Associate Vice President - Database Management (Principal Solutions Architect) at Northbay

Apr 30, 2025

Amazon Aurora is built on community databases and AWS has added additional features to it, allowing customers to have enterprise-level features at a lower cost.

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Learn what your peers think about Amazon Aurora. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: August 2026.

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Rubens Oliveira

Data & Solution Archtect at Enkel

Jul 23, 2025

Amazon Aurora's best features are about scaling up and scaling down, which is perfect.

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Harshavardhana Paresh

Solution Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Jul 11, 2025

The migration process to Amazon Aurora is the best part; it's one of its key strengths, as we hardly had any hiccups during migration, which was very smooth and pretty straightforward given our data was mostly in English.

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Prabakar Vellaipandian

Staff Software Engineer at Altimetrik (Deployed at FORD)

Feb 7, 2025

The most valuable features of Amazon Aurora include the global instance with the global writer endpoint, which allows failovers and instance switches without requiring changes in my code, thanks to the default global Route 53 endpoint.

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Web Developer and IT Consultant at a educational organization with 1,001-5,000 employees

Jan 2, 2025

They now offer some really good scaling and limitless versions that are available to me, which I find very impressive.

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AWS Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Dec 2, 2024

One of the most valuable features is storage scaling.

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Rajitha Jatothu

Aws Devops Engineer at LTIMindtree

Dec 20, 2024

Aurora is a key pillar for us, offering performance and availability.

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JK

Jules Boris KREME

Head of Cloud & DevOps at Institut National Polytechnique Félix Houphouët-Boigny

Nov 27, 2024

Aurora's features that I find the most beneficial include its database backup strategy, performance options, and input-output operations.

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Show 9 more reviews (out of 19)

Amazon Aurora Cons review quotes

SivashankarRajaram

Principal Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

May 4, 2026

Amazon can make better access levels and reduce costs for Amazon Aurora.

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SP

Satheesh Papisetty

Digital Services & Engagement Senior Manager at AXA

Mar 6, 2025

A challenge I noticed is during migration from PostgreSQL RDS to Amazon Aurora. There are technical challenges, such as the inability to provision the database using a PostgreSQL snapshot directly.

Read full review

Associate Vice President - Database Management (Principal Solutions Architect) at Northbay

Apr 30, 2025

Amazon Aurora should upgrade its base PostgreSQL versions more frequently and offer all PostgreSQL extensions.

Read full review

Free Report: Amazon Aurora Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about Amazon Aurora. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: August 2026.

908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Rubens Oliveira

Data & Solution Archtect at Enkel

Jul 23, 2025

I don't use Amazon Aurora's global database feature; I just use the local feature.

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HP

Harshavardhana Paresh

Solution Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Jul 11, 2025

I would like to see some tutorials from Amazon for Aurora because I'm too new to it.

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Prabakar Vellaipandian

Staff Software Engineer at Altimetrik (Deployed at FORD)

Feb 7, 2025

In Oracle, tools like Veridata allow for comparing databases and certifying data accuracy, even offering repair capabilities, which are missing in Aurora. There should be a similar comparison tool in Aurora.

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Web Developer and IT Consultant at a educational organization with 1,001-5,000 employees

Jan 2, 2025

Sometimes mistakes can be easily made, and people can waste money by mistake if they do not know what they are doing.

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AWS Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Dec 2, 2024

AWS RDS doesn't provide an option to apply one-off patches, which can be critical for business due to unexpected product bugs.

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Rajitha Jatothu

Aws Devops Engineer at LTIMindtree

Dec 20, 2024

Room for improvement might be in the UI, integrations, or data working capabilities for better user experience.

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JK

Jules Boris KREME

Head of Cloud & DevOps at Institut National Polytechnique Félix Houphouët-Boigny

Nov 27, 2024

Aurora’s finance aspects could be improved, particularly in reducing the per-hour use cost.

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Show 9 more reviews (out of 19)

Product Categories

Product Categories

Relational Databases Tools

Database Management Systems (DBMS)

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See all alternatives

Product Categories

Product Categories

Relational Databases Tools

Database Management Systems (DBMS)

Popular Comparisons

Popular Comparisons

Teradata vs Amazon Aurora

Snowflake vs Amazon Aurora

SQL Server vs Amazon Aurora

MySQL vs Amazon Aurora

Oracle Database vs Amazon Aurora

MongoDB Atlas vs Amazon Aurora

SAP HANA vs Amazon Aurora

MariaDB vs Amazon Aurora

IBM Db2 Database vs Amazon Aurora

CockroachDB vs Amazon Aurora

Google Cloud SQL vs Amazon Aurora

YugabyteDB vs Amazon Aurora

Citus Data vs Amazon Aurora

IBM Informix vs Amazon Aurora

Oracle MySQL Cloud Service vs Amazon Aurora

See all alternatives

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