Amazon RDS 2026: Benefits, Features & Pricing

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Overview
Pricing and Plans
Features
Integrations
User Reviews

Overview

Amazon RDS

4.7

(218)

Pricing

Starting at $0.01 per month

About Amazon RDS

Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) is a cloud-based software that helps businesses leverage existing database engines to automate administrative tasks such as hardware provisioning, data backup, patching, failure detection and more. Managers can define parameter groups for new database (DB) instances and utilize solid-state drive (SSD) storage to specify the rates of input/output operations per second (IOPS).

Amazon RDS allows enterprises to run databases in a virtual private cloud (VPC) and protect critical information through access control and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) or Transport Layer Security (TLS) encryption. Administrators can use the RDS Management Console to view operational metrics, including storage capacity utilization, input/output (I/O) activities and instance connections. Additionally, the software supports database engines such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, Amazon Aurora, Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server.

Pricing is based on usage and support is extended via documentation, FAQs and other online measures.

Amazon RDS Screenshots

Amazon RDS Pricing and Plans

Starting price: $0.01 per month

Free Trial

Free Version

Basic

$0.01

per feature, per month

No plan information available

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Amazon RDS Features

Popular features found in Database
Backup and Recovery
Database Conversion
Data Connectors
Data Migration
Data Replication
Data Virtualization
Multiple Programming Languages Supported
Performance Analysis
Secure Data Storage
More features of Amazon RDS
Access Controls/Permissions
Alerts/Notifications
API
Automatic Backup
Dashboard
Data Capture and Transfer
Data Dictionary Management
Data Retrieval
Data Storage Management
Disaster Recovery
Encryption
High Availability
Mobile Access
Monitoring
Multitenancy
Performance Monitoring
Relational Database Management
User Management

Amazon RDS Integrations

Amazon EC2

Integration rated 4.8 from 15 reviews

Amazon Aurora

Amazon RDS User Reviews

Overall Rating

4.7

Ratings Breakdown

72%

26%

Secondary Ratings

Ease of Use

4.4

Value for money

4.3

Customer support

4.4

Functionality

4.6

Sonpal Singh S.

Verified reviewer

Computer Software

11-50 employees

Used weekly for less than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed June 2023

Easy To Setup & Super In Security & Data Management

I have a very good experience with AWS RDS system.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

You don't want to care about more configuration setup to run as we did in normal case. A lot of configurable variable available in it to help the system working smooth. You can change maximum setting at runtime . easy to setup replication here, user & permission management is fast & secure.

Cons:

No more cons except the price in compare to others only.

Verified

Reviewer

Publishing

51-200 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed May 2022

Amazon RDS - the backbone of your AWS stack

Waaaay back in the day, we owned and managed huge machines on which we ran our database software. It was Oracle for a while, then we moved to mySQL. But the machine and the software were our problem to handle. Most of the time (because these are not new technologies), there were no problems. But when there were problems, there were huge problems. Because like many websites/apps, data is at the core of what we do. No database, and everything goes poof. Since switching to RDS, this has become a thing of the past. We tell RDS what kind of beefy setup we want, and they do the rest. The mySQL patching. The upgrades. If we want to move to a bigger instance, that's pretty straightforward, too. Database hosting at pretty large scale, with just a few clicks. And no machines to worry about. You get decent (but not amazing) visibility into the instance at any time. But, basically, what you really get is peace of mind, not having to worry that your system's most critical layer will flake out on you. That's worth a lot. Also: AWS's Aurora is a very nice port of mySQL. We've had no issues there either.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Aurora is a great port of mySQL - very compatible and super fast Prices are always going one direction: down Scalable way huge with just a few clicks Automated backups, patching, upgrades You can still do a lot of customization using PL/MYSQL The instances just stay up and running - becomes one less thing to worry about You have options: both mySQL and Postgres

Cons:

It's not amazingly easy to update the various variables that enable you to configure your mySQL instance. I wish it was a bit easier to get monitoring that would give you more granular insight into what's causing issues. You don't have quite as much flexibility and control over special packages you might install to do special stuff (calculating the Levenschtein distance between words, for example).

Reasons for switching to Amazon RDS

Price, speed, ease of maintenance. We were tired of managing our own servers. RDS made keeping a top-notch database up and running MUCH easier for us.

Verified

Reviewer

11-50 employees

Used other for unspecified

Review source

Reviewed April 2018

Amazon RDS is really simple and lightweight.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Amazon RDS is really simple and lightweight. It is easy to use and scale up in the cloud. Easy to setup.

Cons:

I have not used Amazon Relational Database extensively, so I did not find any drawbacks forAmazon Relational Database.

Verified

Reviewer

Logistics and Supply Chain

201-500 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed April 2022

Simplifies a lot of database management work

Overall, Amazon RDS has been very useful to us. It has saved us tremendous amounts of time just in the provisioning, scaling, and maintenance activities alone.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Functionality

Pros:

I like how easy it is to scale RDS up and down alongside its monitoring features which can be conveniently accessed via AWS console.

Cons:

The burst balance limit for the underlying EBS disk gave us lots of problems. I wish this feature was more user-friendly.

Reasons for choosing Amazon RDS

Our main tech infra runs on AWS already.

Reasons for switching to Amazon RDS

In my previous companies, we used to self-host databases (postgres, MySQL/MariaDB) in VMs. This was more expensive in the long run in terms of time spent. We also used Google Cloud SQL for some projects but eventually switched to RDS since our main tech infra runs on AWS.

Verified

Reviewer

Civic & Social Organization

11-50 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed July 2019

Amazing relational database which is easy to setup and use provided you have the technical know how

AWS RDS can be linked with Victorops/splunk/slack and what not to constantly monitor the state of the database and set up alerts for catching problems. It can automatically save regular copies of the database.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

ease of setup ease of taking snapshots no configurational drainers very easy to set up alerts for monitoring problems in the database debugging is a breeze.

Cons:

It is easy to get lost without an UI. also replicating databases can get stuck sometimes if you don't know what you are doing. replication can be pain depending upon whether you want (master-master) or (master-slaves)

Reasons for choosing Amazon RDS

GCP was sort of handing off sensitive data over to Google and flying blind. AWS RDS debugging is much more useful when a problem arises. aws was a no contest choice despite it's expenditure.

Verified

Reviewer

Computer & Network Security

11-50 employees

Used weekly for less than 6 months

Review source

Reviewed November 2022

Dependable Database management solution

Overall it has amazing control features and i have never experienced any kind of downtime with them, they also have very enhanced security features so data birch is out of the question.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

I is easy to integrate and implement also the customer support is quite good when one is having problems with any of their features.Its also important to note that the backup and recovery are free if you turn on the automation feature

Cons:

Auto backup is not automatically turned on so if one forgets to turn it on this might cause challenges in the long run, also i don't think its right even after paying for the solution upfront that one has to leave their financial information on the system

Reasons for choosing Amazon RDS

The solution felt less expensive compared to the others with more advanced features

Muhammad Aamer K.

Verified reviewer

Real Estate

Self-Employed

Used daily for less than 6 months

Review source

Reviewed November 2023

Ámazon RDS is a great option if you need a remote database

My experience with Amazon RDS was great because i could easily establish remote connection to it. It was fast the data retrieval was fast, it is reliable and it is not expansive for what it is providing.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Functionality

Pros:

I like some of the things the most about amazon RDS no 1 obviously the pricing it is amazing you only get charged for your usage and then secondly the remote connection although it is not very easy but when you establish it like for example with your microsoft workbench then there is nothing better than Amazon RDS and then there is more good things for example this is very very secure and fast and reliable

Cons:

The only thing i do not like about is it is very very hard if you are not a Database administrator this is probably harder for you maybe you need some extra exclusive study of it

Monish K.

Verified reviewer

Computer Software

1001-5000 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed April 2020

Cost Effective and Fully Cloud Managed Relational Database Service

Had A Really Great Experience with RDS, I have been evaluating Aurora with Native RDS so i will be talking more about Aurora in this Review

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

RDS provides support for verity of database systems like mysql, postgreSql, Maria DB, Oracle, Microsoft Sql and a hybrid Aurora (supports both mysql & psql) Resizing, network management processes like subnet and security group are easily manageable. Using Aurora it has become easy to transfer data from DB to S3 using "INTO OUTFILE S3" query Aurora is really faster when it comes to executing heavy flock of query simultaneously when compared with its native RDS, it increases the over all through put Aurora Server less is a extremely cost effective solution when used with proper configurations, it scales up and scales down as per its usage (pay per sec) Supports Auto Backing up and scheduled snapshotting which stores the DB snapshot in S3, which helps in recovery at times of data deleted by mistake or data corruption by some failure in the application etc Aurora provides Export Snapshot to S3 feature, its a additional feature towards data movement from RDS to S3, from this we can easily migrate data from RDS to Redshift or Athena via S3

Cons:

Can't change subnet of a multi AZ RDS Database directly, to achieve this i had to first change my DB to single AZ Aurora Server less dose not scale up when used with low CPU utilising application, user should have given the flexibility to change the autoscaling parameter for Aurora server less (CPU utilisation 70%) Aurora the use of "INTO OUTFILE S3" query requires some additional setup steps at the s3 bucket end and IAM role which is well documented, but quite confusing, Aurora dose not support newer mysql or psql versions which are supported by its native RDS's Aurora when compared with its native RDS its slower for executing single queries, officers Aurora is really faster when it comes to executing heavy flock of query simultaneously, but at the least we expect Aurora to perform as the same level as its native RDS when it comes to single queries Aurora's Export Snapshot to S3 feature only supports Parquet file format, and on trigging Export it takes more time to start, it wold be better if the process starts instantaneously

Esra K.

Verified reviewer

Information Technology and Services

51-200 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed April 2019

Best managed relational database service in the market!

Choosing RDS was the best strategic decision we made. We saved a lot of time to focus on our company's growth instead of dealing with operations.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

We have been using AWS RDS with MySQL since 2015. It is the best option we encountered in the market to set up, operate and scale a relational database in the cloud. Management Console is really easy to use. You can create, restore and scale any size of database in a matter of minutes. You should however be familiar with the technical term AWS uses. Be careful when you choose between General Purpose and Provisioned IOPS types. Multi-AZ feature is a life saver if you have a database that cannot tolerate any downtime. Point in time recovery saved us a lot. Also RDS takes automatic backups regularly. You should also try Amazon Aurora which is an engine compatible with MySQL and PostgreSQL. AWS built Aurora for itself and the underlying technology is mind blowing.

Cons:

You should be careful with the price of Amazon RDS and keep an eye on CloudWatch and Trusted Advisor. It gets expensive depending on usage but still it is worth not to struggle with operational problems.

Trang N.

Verified reviewer

Computer Software

1001-5000 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed December 2019

Manage database services solution for AWS Cloud

We use RDS with PostgreSQL and MySQL as our backend database for our Application hosted in AWS, they are located in a private VPC and only allow access from our backend subnet.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Functionality

Pros:

RDS allows us easy to create and manage a relational database for our Application hosted in AWS. It supports many different instance type, engine and scale option to select. RDS works well with VPC to keep our database private and only allow to access from specify sources. It has a lot of monitor metrics such as CPU utilization, free storage, freeable memory and read/write latency and well notification system to keep track of our database. Excellent backup, snapshot and restore support by AWS

Cons:

Manage RDS's parameter is quite complex since it does not have good UI support. It lacks support tool to run SQL command directly from AWS console

Reasons for choosing Amazon RDS

We consider using our self manage databases install in EC2 but come up with RDS as it provides the high ability and scalable, it also saves us effort on configuring, install and manage database

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