Amazon Aurora vs IBM Db2 Database comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and IBM are both solutions in the Relational Databases Tools category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.4, while IBM is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.2. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 3.1% mindshare in SQL, compared to IBM’s 7.1% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 90% of IBM users who would recommend it.

Amazon Aurora

Read 18 Amazon Aurora reviews

2,651 Views
2,356 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

IBM Db2 Database

Read 73 IBM Db2 Database reviews

6,202 Views
4,021 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

Amazon Aurora

IBM Db2 Database

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

IBM Db2 and Amazon Aurora are strong contenders in the database management category. However, Db2 holds an advantage in security and platform flexibility, while Aurora is superior in cloud-native operations and AWS ecosystem integration.

Features: IBM Db2 offers a robust SQL dialect with advanced capabilities like object tables and Java support, ensuring flexible platform use and enhanced performance through self-tuning memory management. Its integration with IBM products is highly valued for security and reliability. Amazon Aurora efficiently standardizes SQL with features such as auto-scaling and high availability, seamlessly integrating with AWS to offer low-latency replication and ease of management, favoring businesses focused on cloud services.

Room for Improvement: IBM Db2 requires simplification in terms of learning curve, particularly for users unfamiliar with Java, and faces challenges with its licensing complexities and cost. Enhancements for cross-platform deployments and development tools are needed. Amazon Aurora could refine its pricing model and compatibility with MySQL, while boosting its documentation on performance tuning for improved user experience.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM Db2's deployment is mainly on-premises, requiring skilled personnel due to its complex process, with customer support regarded as positive but needing faster responses. Amazon Aurora benefits from its cloud-native structure, offering straightforward deployment and scalability with AWS, and customer support services considered consistent and user-friendly, simplifying management processes for users.

Pricing and ROI: IBM Db2 is notable for its high costs driven by intricate licensing fees, though it can be cheaper than Oracle solutions, providing a favorable ROI for its strong capabilities. Amazon Aurora is perceived as cost-effective with its pay-as-you-go model, leveraging AWS's infrastructure to manage costs effectively. Though more expensive than some self-managed solutions, its feature-rich offering compensates for the higher price, delivering solid ROI through its expansive functionalities.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon Aurora vs. IBM Db2 Database Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Aurora vs. IBM Db2 Database

April 2025

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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

7th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

IBM Db2 Database

Ranking in Relational Databases Tools

6th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Relational Databases Tools category, the mindshare of Amazon Aurora is 3.1%, down from 4.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Db2 Database is 7.1%, up from 6.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Relational Databases Tools

Featured Reviews

Adnan Shafiq

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

High availability and geographical redundancy ensure reliable performance and cost efficiency

Amazon Aurora ( /products/amazon-aurora-reviews ) provides up to fifteen to sixteen read replicas. It replicates data across multiple Availability Zones, ensuring high availability and geographical redundancy, which can be considered a GR instead of a DR. As a managed service, maintenance tasks like backup and restore are handled by AWS ( /products/amazon-aws-reviews ), saving my organization significant time and money. Additionally, its fast cloning feature allows us to create a new clone from a large database swiftly, similar to a zero-copy cloning feature in Snowflake ( /products/snowflake-reviews ). This makes Amazon Aurora a compelling choice for my organization.

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SimonHiggins

Mainframe Technical Manager/Service Integration Lead at Saudi Business Machines

Very scalable with high availability and excellent technical support

The good thing is that there are improvements coming with later function levels for the z/OS Db2. I'd like it if, with the operating system that we've got, z/OS, on the mainframe, it would allow us to refresh the hardware to run Linux dockers on the mainframe. This means this might give us opportunities for different ways of coming into the Db2 environment in the future. We just want a bit more integration with Linux. That said, we are already seeing Linux more readily available on the mainframe environment. Not only have we got the premium operating systems on OS. We can run LPARs on the same mainframe footprint that is also supporting Linux. This is what has improved and made the mainframe environment more competitive. We're also looking at AI for Db2 as well, and machine learning for the future. We know that AI has come out, that we're going to get that, and we're going to evaluate that product next year for Db2. That said, I haven't got any real complaints about Db2 on the mainframe. For the most part, a lot of the problems we have nowadays are to do with communication between the various teams that you would class as stakeholders.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

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

"One of the most valuable features is storage scaling."

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

"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 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."

"We had better control over the parameters that we could tweak in terms of intermediate storage and better indexing capabilities."

"Amazon Aurora stands out for its ease of use in a managed environment, inbuilt security, continuous backups, numerous read replicas, multi-region automated replication, and seamless integration with other AWS services."

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

More Amazon Aurora pros

"The most valuable features of this solution are security and stability."

"It is quite a stable solution."

"Some of the most valuable features are the scaling from a small very cheap installation to a very large enterprise installation. In addition, the backups and assistance are good."

"It has a good feature called pureScale, which is just for scalability. It is a perfect solution for environments where scalability is going to be an issue."

"The most valuable feature of the IBM Db2 Database is security."

"The most valuable feature is PowerPC support."

"Db2's best features are that it's self-maintaining and self-monitoring, which means I have to view and monitor the database far less often."

"The most valuable feature of IBM Db2 Database is its ability to perform automatic self-management, reducing the need for manual tasks such as managing logs and folders."

More IBM Db2 Database pros

Cons

"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."

"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."

"It would have been helpful if they had provided some benchmarking numbers."

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

"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."

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

"One of the most valuable features is storage scaling."

"I would like to see more AI-related features in future releases."

More Amazon Aurora cons

"The solution no longer supports POWER8."

"The solution could improve by providing more integration."

"It would be helpful to have a hybrid data storage facility that includes NoSQL technologies."

"The capabilities of this solution could improve."

"Their view of it is they're maintaining it, they're continuing to upgrade it, they're continuing to grow it, however, they don't go out and try and sell that as an architectural solution the way they do Linux and Unix."

"The pricing could be improved, it's expensive."

"Not very solid compared to its competitors' products."

"The GUI interface is not particularly friendly for those who do not have experience with the product."

More IBM Db2 Database cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is an expensive solution."

"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."

"There is no need to buy a license for the product. We can pay as per the use case."

"I would rate the pricing a six out of ten, with ten being expensive."

"It is quite expensive."

"We don't see what the specific price of the DB2 license is because we pay for the backup license as a package."

"They are competitive and honest (compared to how peer firms approach licensing conversations). "

"Db2 is less expensive than Oracle."

"We normally handle large size businesses and as far as I am aware, the license is negotiable based on the number of users and the quantitative data."

"I think that everyone knows that with IBM the standard price is higher than the others."

"It is expensive."

"I rate the price of the IBM Db2 Database an eight out of ten."

"We did not buy it. It came with our hardware without any complimentary maintenance. If I compare Db2 Database with Oracle Database, its price is lower than Oracle Database."

More IBM Db2 Database pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

29%

Computer Software Company

13%

Government

Insurance Company

Educational Organization

55%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon Aurora?

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.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon Aurora?

Amazon Aurora is not very expensive as other solutions with similar features from other vendors come at almost the same cost. I rated it as two to three on a scale where ten is very expensive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Amazon Aurora?

Amazon Aurora should upgrade its base PostgreSQL ( /products/postgresql-reviews ) versions more frequently and offer all PostgreSQL extensions. Keeping extensions up-to-date with PostgreSQL release...

See all answers

What do you like most about IBM Db2 Database?

Db2 database scalability and performance capabilities match our database needs. It covers pretty much everything a database administrator or engineer might need.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Db2 Database?

IBM Db2 is an expensive solution. While I am not heavily involved with pricing, additional companies provide capabilities or products like those from BMC, which many installations might also purchase.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Db2 Database?

The user interface is old and needs to be improved. It doesn't match the responsive and suggestion-rich UI of cloud solutions. New functions don't come to mind.

See all answers

Comparisons

SQL Server vs Amazon Aurora

Compared 34% of the time

Oracle Database vs Amazon Aurora

Compared 23% of the time

MariaDB vs Amazon Aurora

Compared 8% of the time

Citus Data vs Amazon Aurora

Compared 7% of the time

MySQL vs Amazon Aurora

Compared 4% of the time

More Amazon Aurora Competitors

SQL Server vs IBM Db2 Database

Compared 32% of the time

Oracle Database vs IBM Db2 Database

Compared 18% of the time

SAP HANA vs IBM Db2 Database

Compared 16% of the time

Teradata vs IBM Db2 Database

Compared 13% of the time

MariaDB vs IBM Db2 Database

Compared 2% of the time

More IBM Db2 Database Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Aurora

May 2025

Download Amazon Aurora product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Db2 Database

May 2025

Download IBM Db2 Database product report

Also Known As

No data available

DB2

Overview

Amazon Aurora is a MySQL and PostgreSQL-compatible relational database built for the cloud, that combines the performance and availability of traditional enterprise databases with the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of open source databases.

Amazon Aurora is up to five times faster than standard MySQL databases and three times faster than standard PostgreSQL databases. It provides the security, availability, and reliability of commercial databases at 1/10th the cost. Amazon Aurora is fully managed by Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS), which automates time-consuming administration tasks like hardware provisioning, database setup, patching, and backups.

Amazon Aurora features a distributed, fault-tolerant, self-healing storage system that auto-scales up to 64TB per database instance. It delivers high performance and availability with up to 15 low-latency read replicas, point-in-time recovery, continuous backup to Amazon S3, and replication across three Availability Zones (AZs).

Visit the Amazon RDS Management Console to create your first Aurora database instance and start migrating your MySQL and PostgreSQL databases.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

DB2 Enterprise for Linux, UNIX, and Windows is the ideal data server for the most demanding workloads. New XML support is designed to help firms minimize the time and effort it takes to persist and use their XML data reducing development costs and improving business agility.

IBM

Sample Customers

Dow Jones, Arizona State University, Verizon, Capital One, United Nations, Nielsen, Autodesk, Fanduel

Knorr-Bremse, Mizuho Bank Ltd., Australian Government Department of Defence, SCHWENK Zement, Friedhelm Loh Group, YAZAKI Europe Limited, Ekornes ASA, Baldor Electric, VSN Systemen BV, Lion Brewery (Ceylon) PLC, PLANSEE Group, TE Connectivity, Hansgrohe SE, Openmatics, University of Toronto

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Aurora vs. IBM Db2 Database

April 2025

Free Report: Amazon Aurora vs. IBM Db2 Database

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