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Amazon Aurora vs Amazon RDS on Outposts comparison

 

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 RDS on Outposts
Ranking in Relational Databases Tools
16th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Relational Databases Tools category, the mindshare of Amazon Aurora is 3.2%, up from 2.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon RDS on Outposts is 1.0%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Relational Databases Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Amazon Aurora3.2%
Amazon RDS on Outposts1.0%
Other95.8%
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.
Junilson Souza - PeerSpot reviewer
Membro Do Conselho Consultivo at a computer software company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Has reduced database management efforts and supported student learning through smooth deployment
The most important feature of Amazon RDS on Outposts for me is the self-managed aspect. The user doesn't have to worry about putting the service online, scaling the solution, and they don't have to worry about backups and other administrative tasks. The self-managed feature by AWS is very interesting. I use the automated backups in Amazon RDS on Outposts, and I recommend it. I work as a consultant for AWS products, and I have recommended Amazon RDS on Outposts and the automatic backup. Automated backups are helpful because the technical team doesn't have to worry about backups, making it much easier. It frees the technical team to deal with other kinds of questions within their projects. Amazon RDS on Outposts positively impacted my organization by being very useful to migrate, freeing the technical team to think about other matters instead of focusing just on backups and provisioning the database.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Aurora is a key pillar for us, offering performance and availability."
"The solution’s scalability is good since we don’t need to take a maintenance window during unpredictable workloads. I like the solution’s behind-the-scenes happenings. It is a great feature."
"The provision of custom read and write endpoints eliminates the need for managing a separate proxy load balancer."
"One of the standout features of Amazon Aurora is that we do not need to maintain disaster recovery or manage availability zones."
"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."
"Aurora's features that I find the most beneficial include its database backup strategy, performance options, and input-output operations."
"One of the most valuable features is storage scaling."
"Aurora's compatibility with MySQL or PostgreSQL benefited our database management. The migration from on-premise MySQL to Aurora was similar, so we didn't need to change our source code."
"The scalability and cost-effectiveness of AWS were beneficial during spikes in database usage, as it allowed our platform to adjust and remain operational."
"Amazon RDS on Outposts positively impacted my organization by being very useful to migrate, freeing the technical team to think about other matters instead of focusing just on backups and provisioning the database."
"The product's initial setup phase is simple and straightforward."
"The solution reduces the configuration and maintenance of the database."
"The solution is easy to manage."
 

Cons

"The pricing could improve. It should be reduced."
"Room for improvement might be in the UI, integrations, or data working capabilities for better user experience."
"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."
"Sometimes mistakes can be easily made, and people can waste money by mistake if they do not know what they are doing."
"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."
"It would have been helpful if they had provided some benchmarking numbers."
"Amazon can make better access levels and reduce costs for Amazon Aurora."
"A challenge with stability is the lack of long-term log retention."
"If our database is too big, we sometimes face glitches in it."
"I would like to see some improvements in its version upgrades because its upgrade from MySQL 5.7 to MySQL 8 was not straightforward."
"I find the pricing to be expensive."
"Areas that could be improved with Amazon RDS on Outposts for Brazilians include the cost because it remains a very important consideration."
"The tool should include features to clone the RDS instances and have more central management for a lot of RDSs, not just every instance."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is quite expensive."
"I would rate the pricing a six out of ten, with ten being expensive."
"It is an expensive solution."
"The tool’s pricing depends on the instance type. For cost optimization purposes, we use the result instance category."
"The price could be lower compared to its competitors."
"There is no need to buy a license for the product. We can pay as per the use case."
"The licenses are included with the subscription my company purchases from Amazon."
"The solution can get expensive fast."
"Amazon RDS on Outposts is expensive compared to other solutions."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
University
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
No data available
 

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 RDS on Outposts?
Regarding price, using Amazon RDS on Outposts was a little bit more expensive than using EC2.
What needs improvement with Amazon RDS on Outposts?
Areas that could be improved with Amazon RDS on Outposts for Brazilians include the cost because it remains a very important consideration. The general self-managing service is a concern as well be...
What is your primary use case for Amazon RDS on Outposts?
I have experience with AWS. I have about five years of experience with AWS products. The AWS products I deal with include virtual machines, EC2, database, basic storage, S3, and basic usage. I have...
 

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 RDS on Outposts and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.