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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
6th
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
28th
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 May 2026, in the Relational Databases Tools category, the mindshare of Amazon Aurora is 3.2%, up from 3.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Citus Data is 2.3%, down from 2.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Relational Databases Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Amazon Aurora3.2%
Citus Data2.3%
Other94.5%
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 the best service within AWS products for our needs."
"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."
"Amazon Aurora's best features are about scaling up and scaling down, which is perfect."
"The provision of custom read and write endpoints eliminates the need for managing a separate proxy load balancer."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to do multiple-read and single-write. These are the kinds of features that we were interested in, and Aurora takes care of that natively."
"Aurora is a key pillar for us, offering performance and availability."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to do multiple-read and single-write, and Aurora takes care of that natively, with a lot less maintenance and user input required."
"We have seen an increase in customer satisfaction and availability with the switch from RDS to Aurora."
"The solution is competitive with Mongo, MySQL, and maybe even Oracle."
"It's very straightforward to implement the solution. It took us two days to set up everything."
"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."
"You can use Citus Data to write complex scripts. I like its version upgrades and disaster recovery as well."
 

Cons

"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."
"The product's distributed query process for MySQL needs improvement."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Sometimes mistakes can be easily made, and people can waste money by mistake if they do not know what they are doing."
"Room for improvement might be in the UI, integrations, or data working capabilities for better user experience."
"Amazon can make better access levels and reduce costs for Amazon Aurora."
"More features in monitoring and the reporting could make it better."
"More features in monitoring and the reporting could make it better."
"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."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool’s pricing depends on the instance type. For cost optimization purposes, we use the result instance category."
"It is quite expensive."
"The price could be lower compared to its competitors."
"It is an expensive solution."
"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
16%
University
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Retailer
6%
Computer Software Company
14%
Construction Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
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?
I would like to see some tutorials from Amazon for Aurora because I'm too new to it. I believe Amazon can make more tutorials for the product since there's a lot of reading required, and a short tu...
What is your primary use case for Amazon Aurora?
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 dat...
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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: April 2026.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.