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Amazon Aurora vs Citus Data 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
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
Database Management Systems (DBMS) (6th)
Citus Data
Ranking in Relational Databases Tools
29th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Relational Databases Tools category, the mindshare of Amazon Aurora is 3.2%, up from 2.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Citus Data is 2.1%, down from 2.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Relational Databases Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Amazon Aurora3.2%
Citus Data2.1%
Other94.7%
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.
Arucy Lionel - PeerSpot reviewer
Co-Founder at Afriziki
Efficiently handles high-traffic scenarios and compatible with PostgreSQL extensions, offering flexibility in database management
There are many areas of improvement , especially in terms of DDL query routing. Even though it's masterless, DDL queries need to be sent to the coordinator node. Also, setting up a multi-node environment could be more straightforward. Currently, setting up a multi-node environment is challenging. It's a bit tricky. Installation on each PostgreSQL node can lead to communication issues between nodes. An automatic rebalancing feature would be a significant improvement. Currently, I have to manually command the rebalance. It would be more convenient if it was rebalanced automatically. The dashboard and monitoring capabilities are good, but it would be helpful to have an integrated availability dashboard.

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 provision of custom read and write endpoints eliminates the need for managing a separate proxy load balancer."
"Aurora's features that I find the most beneficial include its database backup strategy, performance options, and input-output operations."
"They now offer some really good scaling and limitless versions that are available to me, which I find very impressive."
"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."
"One of the standout features of Amazon Aurora is that we do not need to maintain disaster recovery or manage availability zones."
"Another advantage is that with AWS handling administration, responsibilities like database provisioning and maintenance are significantly reduced."
"One of the most valuable features is storage scaling."
"Its distributed processing capabilities are a standout feature. It requires minimal changes to get up and running if you already have a system on PostgreSQL. Citus can run in its natural state."
"The solution is competitive with Mongo, MySQL, and maybe even Oracle."
"You can use Citus Data to write complex scripts. I like its version upgrades and disaster recovery as well."
"It's very straightforward to implement the solution. It took us two days to set up everything."
 

Cons

"I would like to see some tutorials from Amazon for Aurora because I'm too new to it."
"Amazon Aurora should upgrade its base PostgreSQL versions more frequently and offer all PostgreSQL extensions."
"AWS RDS doesn't provide an option to apply one-off patches, which can be critical for business due to unexpected product bugs."
"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."
"I don't use Amazon Aurora's global database feature; I just use the local feature."
"I would like to see performance insights on the database based on the queries. Currently, we use SolarWinds as the monitoring tool. I would like to leverage SolarWinds’ performance insights in AWS services. SolarWinds gives larger insights when we run performance issues."
"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."
"Citus Data needs to improve its stability. Do not consider this product if you have the budget. It is still developing and has a lot of issues."
"There are many areas of improvement , especially in terms of DDL query routing. Even though it's masterless, DDL queries need to be sent to the coordinator node. Also, setting up a multi-node environment could be more straightforward."
"More features in monitoring and the reporting could make it better."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is an expensive solution."
"It is quite expensive."
"The price could be lower compared to its competitors."
"The tool’s pricing depends on the instance type. For cost optimization purposes, we use the result instance category."
"I would rate the pricing a six out of ten, with ten being expensive."
"There is no need to buy a license for the product. We can pay as per the use case."
"Citus Data is an open-source product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Healthcare Company
11%
University
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
13%
Construction Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
 

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.
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Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Dow Jones, Arizona State University, Verizon, Capital One, United Nations, Nielsen, Autodesk, Fanduel
Cloud Flare, Agari, Mix Rank, Heap
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Aurora vs. Citus Data and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.