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Amazon Aurora vs Amazon Aurora Serverless comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon Aurora
Ranking in Relational Databases Tools
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
Database Management Systems (DBMS) (6th)
Amazon Aurora Serverless
Ranking in Relational Databases Tools
20th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.8
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Relational Databases Tools category, the mindshare of Amazon Aurora is 3.1%, up from 2.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon Aurora Serverless is 1.2%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Relational Databases Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Amazon Aurora3.1%
Amazon Aurora Serverless1.2%
Other95.7%
Relational Databases Tools
 

Featured Reviews

SivashankarRajaram - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Cloud database has delivered high performance and cost savings for data recovery and growth
Amazon can make better access levels and reduce costs for Amazon Aurora. A cost reduction would support multiple teams to adopt this solution since the cost is currently higher. Comparatively, we have the feature of scaling and everything we need. If you launch PostgreSQL on-premises, you need to have a separate DBA for maintenance and everything. If Amazon reduces the cost of Amazon Aurora, it would support large team adoption. A great feature to see in the next version of Amazon Aurora would be improvements in vectorization. In our PostgreSQL, we have pg_vector that helps with vectorizing many of the tables and that is used for data science projects. If Amazon improves this vectorization, it would be much more useful for data science and AI projects.
Anibal Palacios - PeerSpot reviewer
CTO at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
Database availability has improved with quick recovery and enhanced network setup
I use Aurora mainly for creating and maintaining databases, such as Aurora (MySQL version) databases, within the system. I value it for its network security and quicker recovery options Aurora is used as it is an easier solution for our requirements and offers high availability. It allows us to…

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The main benefits my company receives from Amazon Aurora are performance and cost."
"They now offer some really good scaling and limitless versions that are available to me, which I find very impressive."
"One of the most valuable features is storage scaling."
"One of the standout features of Amazon Aurora is that we do not need to maintain disaster recovery or manage availability zones."
"Cost-wise, switching to Amazon Aurora is beneficial, saving me around $60,000 per year."
"The provision of custom read and write endpoints eliminates the need for managing a separate proxy load balancer."
"The most valuable feature is that the maintainability is offloaded to the service provider, so I don't have to maintain a database or do any administrative tasks, which comes in handy."
"Amazon Aurora's best features are about scaling up and scaling down, which is perfect."
"Aurora could improve its affordability, even though its price is very completive compared to DBs as SLQ Server."
"Amazon Aurora Serverless is easy to scale, offering a cluster-based shared scaling model with options for Autoscale."
"Amazon Aurora Serverless helps in reducing costs by allowing scalable solutions that split read and write endpoints, effectively managing database load and saving on capacity costs compared to our previous solution."
"Aurora makes it easier for me to create an environment within the network, offering faster recovery and 100% availability by replicating databases across two availability zones, and its scalability features for peak workloads are very beneficial."
"The most valuable feature of Amazon Aurora Serverless is its serverless nature, which means I do not have to maintain the underlying infrastructure, and it is highly scalable with a favorable pricing model that greatly enhances our operational efficiency by eliminating the need to set specific thresholds and preventing client data access issues due to uneven growth."
"The most valuable feature of Amazon Aurora Serverless is its serverless nature, which means I do not have to maintain the underlying infrastructure."
 

Cons

"Amazon can make better access levels and reduce costs for Amazon Aurora."
"When using the serverless version of Amazon Aurora, I encountered issues such as the inbuilt query editor not being available."
"Sometimes mistakes can be easily made, and people can waste money by mistake if they do not know what they are doing."
"It is a bit costly. The features are quite good, and I wouldn't say it requires any technical improvements. But from a cost perspective, some clients wouldn't go for Aurora because of that."
"There is improvement needed to have more developer focus. Additionally, it would be helpful to have a stand-alone solution outside of Amazon. Amazon has a tendency to favor developing web-based clients, which may not always provide the fastest or most responsive solution as desired."
"There are tuning challenges. The same methods used for tuning in RDS might not work in Aurora, and some functionalities available in MySQL may not be compatible with Aurora."
"There should be constant changes, which can be challenging to keep up with annually."
"In my experience, I didn't see the claimed speed, and when you factor in the cost, or the extra cost of Aurora compared to a normal database, it didn't justify the cost from a performance standpoint, but it did justify the cost because we didn't have to have multiple instances, Redis caches, and other things like that."
"Amazon Aurora could improve its detailed monitoring, especially in CloudWatch, to provide more precise query level insights."
"Aurora could improve its affordability, as it is currently considered a bit expensive."
"Amazon Aurora Serverless could benefit from a few more security features, particularly in terms of its accessibility."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is no need to buy a license for the product. We can pay as per the use case."
"It is an expensive solution."
"It is quite expensive."
"The price could be lower compared to its competitors."
"I would rate the pricing a six out of ten, with ten being expensive."
"The tool’s pricing depends on the instance type. For cost optimization purposes, we use the result instance category."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
University
11%
Healthcare Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
29%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Outsourcing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise14
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon Aurora?
The pricing for Amazon Aurora is different from DocumentDB because DocumentDB is cheaper. However, when you manage the administration more closely, you can control costs better with Amazon Aurora. ...
What needs improvement with Amazon Aurora?
Amazon can make better access levels and reduce costs for Amazon Aurora. A cost reduction would support multiple teams to adopt this solution since the cost is currently higher. Comparatively, we h...
What is your primary use case for Amazon Aurora?
Amazon Aurora is a service provided by AWS, and we received support from AWS for our implementation. The direction we are moving toward is specifically Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon Aurora Serverless?
In my experience, Aurora is a bit expensive. The costs depend on the size of the database.
What needs improvement with Amazon Aurora Serverless?
Aurora could improve its affordability, as it is currently considered a bit expensive. There is room to make it more cost-effective for users even though its price is very completive compared to DB...
What is your primary use case for Amazon Aurora Serverless?
I use Aurora mainly for creating and maintaining databases, such as Aurora (MySQL version) databases, within the system. I value it for its network security and quicker recovery options.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Dow Jones, Arizona State University, Verizon, Capital One, United Nations, Nielsen, Autodesk, Fanduel
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Aurora vs. Amazon Aurora Serverless and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,683 professionals have used our research since 2012.