Amazon Aurora
activeby Amazon Web Services · since 2015 · also known as Aurora, Aurora MySQL, Aurora PostgreSQL, Aurora Serverless
AWS's MySQL- and PostgreSQL-compatible engine on a shared, six-way replicated storage layer.
Overview
Aurora is AWS's re-engineered MySQL- and PostgreSQL-compatible relational service. It keeps the familiar engines' query layers but replaces their storage with a log-structured volume replicated six ways across three Availability Zones, which gives fast crash recovery, up to 15 low-lag read replicas sharing the same storage, and copy-on-write clones. Aurora Serverless v2 scales capacity in fine-grained ACUs and can now pause to zero, while Global Database replicates to other regions for DR and local reads. It is the default choice for AWS shops that want managed MySQL or Postgres with better availability than RDS, at the cost of AWS lock-in and I/O-sensitive pricing.
Strengths & trade-offs
Strengths
- +Six-way replicated storage across three AZs with fast failover (typically under 30 s)
- +Up to 15 read replicas sharing one storage volume with millisecond-level lag
- +Copy-on-write fast clones for test environments and analytics snapshots
- +Serverless v2 scales in half-ACU steps and can pause to zero capacity
- +Global Database for cross-region DR and local reads
- +Zero-ETL integrations into Redshift and other AWS analytics services
Trade-offs
- −AWS-only; storage layer and features are not portable
- −Single writer per cluster limits write scaling without Limitless
- −Costs can spike with I/O-heavy workloads on the Standard configuration
- −Engine versions and extensions lag upstream MySQL/PostgreSQL releases
Great for
- +Production MySQL or PostgreSQL backends on AWS
- +Read-heavy web and SaaS applications
- +Spiky or dev/test workloads on Serverless v2
- +Cross-region disaster recovery with Global Database
- +pgvector-based semantic search next to relational data
Think twice for
- −Multi-cloud or on-premises deployments
- −Write-heavy workloads exceeding one large writer
- −Low-budget hobby projects
Capabilities
Native or official first-party support · 17 of 25 tracked
Scale & consistency
- Comfortable data size
- Large · ≤ 1 PB
- Horizontal scaling
- Addon
- Multi-region
- Read replicas
- Transactions
- Full ACID
- Consistency
- Strong, Eventual
- Schema
- Strict
- Architecture
- Shared storage, Primary replica, Serverless
- Query languages
- SQL, PL/pgSQL
Single writer per cluster with up to 15 read replicas; storage grows automatically to 128 TiB-class volumes; Aurora PostgreSQL Limitless Database adds managed sharding.
Deployment
available on · AWS
Ecosystem
Alternatives to Amazon Aurora
AWS's managed service for six relational engines: PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, Oracle, SQL Server and Db2.
amazon-aurora vs amazon-rds →Google's Postgres-compatible service with disaggregated storage, a columnar engine and ScaNN vectors.
amazon-aurora vs alloydb →Google Cloud's managed MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQL Server, with an Enterprise Plus tier for fast failover.
amazon-aurora vs google-cloud-sql →Microsoft's managed community PostgreSQL, with zone-redundant HA, DiskANN vectors and Citus elastic clusters.
amazon-aurora vs azure-database-for-postgresql →Serverless Postgres with copy-on-write branching and scale-to-zero, now part of Databricks.
amazon-aurora vs neon →Serverless, active-active distributed SQL on AWS with PostgreSQL compatibility and no instances to size.
amazon-aurora vs amazon-aurora-dsql →Amazon Aurora FAQ
What is Amazon Aurora?
Amazon Aurora is a relational database by Amazon Web Services, first released in 2015. Aurora is AWS's re-engineered MySQL- and PostgreSQL-compatible relational service. It keeps the familiar engines' query layers but replaces their storage with a log-structured volume replicated six ways across three Availability Zones, which gives fast crash recovery, up to 15 low-lag read replicas sharing the same storage, and copy-on-write clones. Aurora Serverless v2 scales capacity in fine-grained ACUs and can now pause to zero, while Global Database replicates to other regions for DR and local reads. It is the default choice for AWS shops that want managed MySQL or Postgres with better availability than RDS, at the cost of AWS lock-in and I/O-sensitive pricing.
Is Amazon Aurora open source?
No. Amazon Aurora is proprietary, closed-source software.
Does Amazon Aurora support ACID transactions?
Yes. Amazon Aurora supports full ACID transactions, with strong, eventual consistency.
Does Amazon Aurora scale horizontally?
Amazon Aurora scales horizontally through an official extension, proxy or edition rather than in the core engine. It is comfortable at large scale (≤ 1 PB). It supports cross-region read replicas.
How can I run Amazon Aurora?
You can use the vendor's managed cloud and run it serverless. It is available on AWS.
What is Amazon Aurora best for?
Amazon Aurora is a strong fit for production MySQL or PostgreSQL backends on AWS; read-heavy web and SaaS applications; and spiky or dev/test workloads on Serverless v2. Think twice for multi-cloud or on-premises deployments.
What are the best alternatives to Amazon Aurora?
Common alternatives to Amazon Aurora include Amazon RDS, AlloyDB for PostgreSQL, Google Cloud SQL, Azure Database for PostgreSQL and Neon. The right choice depends on your workload, scale and hosting; WhichDB's smart match ranks them against your requirements.
How popular is Amazon Aurora?
Amazon Aurora ranks #123 of 844 databases on the WhichDB Score (24.9/100), and #39 among relational databases. The score combines public adoption signals such as package downloads, GitHub activity, job posts and developer discussion.