AWS Aurora vs. RDS—A side-by-side comparison

AWS Aurora and AWS Relational Database Service (RDS) are two robust database solutions within Amazon Web Services (AWS). While both offer scalability, task automation, and speed, they have unique features designed for different use cases. Understanding these differences is key to determining which service best suits your needs.

In this article, we’ll solve the Aurora vs. RDS dilemma by comparing their underlying infrastructures, capabilities, security measures, and pricing options. 

What is AWS Aurora?

AWS Aurora is a fully managed relational database service—but what does that really mean? Let’s break it down:

1. Fully managed: AWS handles the infrastructure and the necessary resources to guarantee reliable service. This means you don’t need to worry about complex configurations or management—you focus only on your business process, and AWS does the rest.

2. Relational database: Relational databases organize your data in rows and columns, forming tables of mutually connected data points. Many industries use them to save, manipulate, and retrieve data, including retail (product and customer info), healthcare (patient info or medical histories), and finance (client info or transaction history).

Aurora is fully compatible with MySQL and PostgreSQL, the most popular open-source relational databases. “Full compatibility” means you can effortlessly move your data from these databases to Aurora.

Aurora also offers DSQL, a serverless, distributed SQL database that scales automatically as your data grows.

But what is AWS Aurora used for exactly? It stores and manages data for applications and websites, ensuring fast and reliable access. Its biggest strength is speed, so it’s perfect for services that depend on fast data access (think e-commerce websites and streaming platforms).

What are the benefits of Aurora?

Some of the key benefits of Aurora include:

• High performance and speed: Aurora is ultra-fast, running five times faster than MySQL and three times faster than PostgreSQL. This makes it ideal for apps that need to handle a lot of data quickly, such as social media platforms or online gaming websites.

• High availability: Aurora guarantees a 99.99% uptime (“four nines”) according to its Service Level Agreement (SLA). This means that the downtime won’t exceed nine seconds per day. 

• Easy migration: Move data from MySQL and PostgreSQL databases to Aurora with minimal code change, as Aurora supports the same queries, drivers, and protocols. You can put your existing database skills to work to complete the migration.

What is AWS RDS?

AWS Relational Database Service (RDS) is another relational database service with an important focus: automating all the behind-the-scenes tasks related to database management, such as provisioning, configuring, backing up, and patching. 

What are the benefits of AWS RDS?

Here are a few important advantages of RDS:

• Easy to manage: With RDS, you can say goodbye to time-consuming and often tedious database administrative tasks. No need to worry about setup, maintenance, or infrastructure—just focus on your application.

• Flexibility engine options: RDS supports eight engines (the software components that power the database system), including Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL-Compatible Edition, RDS for MySQL, and RDS for Oracle.

• High availability: RDS can automatically create a primary database and replicate the data from it to a database in another Availability Zone (strategically located data center in the AWS global infrastructure). If your primary database fails, one of the standby databases will take its place, making sure there’s no downtime. This approach is called multi-AZ deployment.

What are the key differences between AWS Aurora and RDS?

Let’s dive into the key differences between Aurora and RDS, including their architecture, performance, overall features, as well as pricing and security.

Architecture and infrastructure

The first notable difference between AWS RDS and Aurora lies in their architecture and infrastructure, or the way they’re built and structured. 

AWS built Aurora from scratch as its own proprietary database engine. With a cloud-native architecture, it’s built specifically for the cloud, allowing it to leverage all the benefits of cloud computing, including easier data backup and recovery from failures.

RDS is also a cloud-based service, but its architecture isn’t completely new like Aurora’s—it’s based on existing databases like MySQL and Oracle. Think of RDS as a traditional database solution that works in the cloud, so it lacks the speed and performance of cloud-native databases.

Features

RDS and Aurora share some common traits, such as:

• High availability

• Scalability

• Automated backup

• Automation of administrative tasks

However, there are several key differences in the features these services offer. For example, here’s what you can get with Aurora that you won’t find with RDS:

• Aurora Serverless: This is a unique configuration for Aurora that automatically adjusts capacity based on your app’s needs to reduce costs and simplify operations. Let’s say you own an e-commerce store specializing in makeup. At night, when the traffic is low, Aurora Serverless will cut back on resources to save you money. During holidays, when there’s an increased demand for your products, Aurora Serverless will ramp up the resources to ensure your database can handle it.

• Built-in fault tolerance: Aurora replicates its data across three Availability Zones, with two copies in each. This gives you confidence and peace of mind in case of a failure—you can still update your database and retrieve info from it even if some copies fail.

• Self-healing storage: Aurora “heals” itself by constantly scanning data blocks and discs for errors and automatically replacing them if necessary.

None of these features are available on AWS RDS—the service has its own unique features and benefits:

• Comprehensive engine support: RDS supports eight database engines, so you can choose whatever engine(s) you’re comfortable with. This makes RDS suitable for various use cases, from deploying e-commerce websites that need to process a lot of data to managing banking apps that require high security. Depending on your chosen engine, you’ll access engine-specific features. For instance, Amazon RDS Optimized Writes, which enhances write transaction performance, works only on MySQL and MariaDB engines.

• Numerous deployment options: You can run RDS in the cloud or on-premises using Outposts. So, you can get the best of both worlds—keeping your database in-house while enjoying the benefits of RDS. If you need to keep your data on-premises due to strict regulations (for example, health organizations often need to store confidential patient records in their own data centers), RDS can help you meet those requirements while still benefiting from the power of the cloud. 

Performance

An important feature that gives Aurora an edge when it comes to performance is Aurora Replicas. These are copies of your main database that share storage with it, so you don’t pay for extra space. 

Aurora Replicas is a handy feature for freeing up processing power and is perfect for apps that need to handle a large number of read requests (when users want to “ask” your database for info). A bunch of read requests can overwhelm your main database, so Aurora Replicas jump in to save the day and handle all requests with minimal delays, which makes them ideal for:

• Social media platforms: Users search for specific people, read posts, and interact with content.

• Video games: Players want to pull game data or check out leaderboards.

• E-commerce platforms: Users want to browse products and learn more about them or check out prices.

Some other convenient performance-enhancing features you get with Aurora are:

• Aurora Parallel Query: Helps you analyze huge amounts of data or run reports without delays or compromised database performance.

• Custom database endpoints: Let you organize workloads (tasks) according to your needs to prevent overloading your main database. For example, you can direct analytics tasks that require a lot of processing power to an Aurora Replica.

The main perk of RDS in this context is customizable performance—you have two options:

RDS also offers options for optimizing database updates (Amazon RDS Optimized Writes) and handling user requests to the database. 

Backup capabilities

On the surface, RDS and Aurora offer similar backup features, such as:

A major difference is that Aurora backups are continuous, meaning the service will save a copy of every change you make to your data. With RDS, backups are daily—they happen within a 30-minute period known as the backup window.

RDS does allow manual backups through database snapshots, so you can save your data at any point if you don’t want to wait for the backup window. These backups won’t get deleted after the retention period—you can delete them when you want.

Another difference to keep in mind is that Aurora backups have no impact on the database performance, which may not always be the case with RDS. You may experience performance lags during the backup window.

Security

AWS prioritizes security, so it’s no surprise both RDS and Aurora offer similar security options:

1. Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC): You can run databases in an isolated network—think of VPC as your private island, where you set your own rules and control who can join you.

2. Data encryption: You can encrypt data at rest (data not being used or transferred) and in transit (data traveling from one place to another). Manage your keys with AWS Key Management Service.

3. Threat detection: You can identify potential threats to data stored in your RDS or Aurora databases with GuardDuty. The tool analyzes log-in activity, and if it identifies suspicious behavior, it will generate a report about it.

With Aurora, you also get advanced auditing—you can log database events without jeopardizing the database’s performance. You can later analyze these logs for security and other purposes, such as governance or regulatory compliance.

Pricing

The one thing RDS and Aurora have in common when it comes to pricing is the complexity. Both services have customizable pricing that depends on different factors.

With RDS, you get a free tier with limited usage and storage. This can be a great way to get to know the service and see if it fits your needs well. If you decide to upgrade to a paid plan, how much you’ll pay will depend on the following factors:

• Engine type: Your engine, instance type, and storage option affect the pricing.

• Deployment: Every deployment option has unique pricing.

• Extended support: You’ll be charged extra if you want to keep running your database on a major engine version after the community end-of-life.

• Data transfer: Some data transfers (like those between RDS and EC2 instances in the same AZ) are free, while others cost extra.

• Public IPv4: You’ll be charged extra for assigning IPv4 addresses.

Aurora doesn’t offer a free tier, and you can choose between several pricing models:

1. Pay-as-you-go

2. On-demand

3. Reserved Instance

Factors that affect the final cost are the selected database instance, storage, and input/output (I/O). Of course, you’ll be charged extra for additional features like more backup storage, backtracking (returning an Aurora database to a prior point in time without restoring data from a backup), and API requests.

Overall, Aurora tends to be more expensive since it offers enhanced performance and more advanced options.

You can use the AWS Pricing Calculator to estimate the costs of both services and avoid unpleasant surprises.

When should you use AWS Aurora? An overview + customer stories

You should use Aurora if you’re:

• Prioritizing high performance and speed

• Handling workloads requiring minimal delays

• Running mission-critical apps (those essential to your organization’s operations)

• Requiring virtually unlimited scalability

Here are a few examples of how companies use Aurora:

Samsung

Samsung, one of the world’s largest producers of electronic devices, migrated its massive Samsung Account database of 1.1 billion users from Oracle to Aurora. This global migration of mission-critical workload took 18 months, and it provided the following benefits to the company:

• A 44% reduction in monthly database costs compared to Oracle

• 60 ms latency or less, 90% of the time

• Infinite opportunities for scaling

10x

10x Banking, an innovative banking platform, decided to migrate its self-hosted SQL database that no longer met its needs to a different database. As a banking business, they needed accuracy and reliability at all times, with no room for mistakes, so the company opted for Aurora.

They started the migration in September 2021 and completed it in January 2023—it took so long because they needed to migrate in increments to ensure continuous service to users. Overall, 10x migrated a whopping 25 TB of data with 100% accuracy across environments.

Here are some of the key benefits 10x unlocked with this migration:

• Reduced operational costs by 50%

• 6x lower latency

• Improved customer experience

• Workloads of three to four engineers shifted toward more valuable tasks

When to use AWS RDS? Hear from customers

Here are a few situations where RDS could be the right choice for you:

• You want to free up your data engineers’ time by automating some of the database management tasks

• You prioritize cost-efficiency

• You need comprehensive database engine support

RDS has thousands of customers, and here are two inspiring stories that show its power:

Freshworks

Freshworks, an AI-powered business platform, started out as a small team, but the company grew rapidly and expanded to new regions. They wanted a simple solution that could support their growth and offer consistent performance.

They picked RDS for MySQL because it’s easy to set up and operate. Since the migration, the company has continued to grow, largely thanks to the support that RDS offers. Using the service, the company is able to:

• Handle 500,000 web requests per minute without lags for Freshdesk

• Improve productivity by automating infrastructure management

• Simplify disaster recovery thanks to multi-AZ deployment

Tonkean

Tonkean is a software-as-a-service startup often called “the operating system for business operations” because it simplifies the orchestration of complex business processes.

The platform is built entirely on the cloud, but at one point, the company experienced issues with its original cloud provider, leading to frequent downtime. In 2019, Tonkean decided to migrate to RDS for MySQL, and this was a winning move because it allowed the company to:

1. Increase uptime of web applications to 99.99%

2. Save 15% on costs

3. Enhance staff productivity

4. Improve performance

Map out your cloud architecture with Miro

Regardless of whether you end up choosing RDS or Aurora (or both), your databases are a key component of your AWS infrastructure. But they aren’t the only component to keep in mind—depending on the software you’re building, your cloud infrastructure can consist of dozens of services and resources.

If you want to better understand your entire cloud setup and illustrate the role of cloud-based databases in it, you should map out interactions between all the components. Visualizing the infrastructure will provide an in-depth overview of all moving parts and facilitate transparency and collaboration between stakeholders. To properly map out your AWS infrastructure, you need a good diagramming tool, and there’s no better than Miro.

Miro’s an Innovation Workspace with powerful features focused on architecture diagramming, including:

• AWS Cloud View app: Miro partnered up with AWS to help you effortlessly generate architecture diagrams. Simply import the data from your AWS account into Miro, and the Cloud View app will create a diagram.

• AWS shape pack: Miro boasts a huge library of standardized AWS icons, making the diagramming process even simpler.

• AWS Cost Calculator: Make accurate cost estimations in real time and compare different configurations to optimize your expenses and prevent surprises.

• Diagram focus mode: With options to easily update alignment and distribution, as well as a curated toolbar and layers, you’ll have everything you need to become a pro at diagramming.

• Templates: Miro has 13+ AWS diagramming templates designed to save you time. They come with a premade structure, but you can customize them according to your needs. For example, you can use the On-Premise to Cloud Migration Process Flowchart Template if you want to move your database to RDS or Aurora and plan your steps.

Ready to create detailed diagrams of your AWS architecture? Try out Miro’s AWS features by signing up for a Business trial.

If you’re wondering how to leverage Miro and need some ideas, check out how ClickHouse improved collaboration and accelerated feature development using the platform’s capabilities.

Want to migrate to AWS without worrying about security or lack of proper collaboration? Check out our cloud migration whitepaper and watch the webinar to learn how Miro can help.