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Amazon RDS

Easy to manage relational databases optimized for total cost of ownership.

What is Amazon RDS?

Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) is a fully managed relational database service optimized for total cost of ownership. It automates provisioning, configuration, backups, and patching across nine database engines and two deployment options, serving developers and database administrators who need production databases without provisioning infrastructure or maintaining software.

How much does Amazon RDS cost?

Try Amazon RDS for free

New AWS customers receive up to $200 in AWS Free Tier credits, which can be applied towards eligible AWS services, including Amazon RDS. The free plan is available for 6 months after account creation.

Learn more about the AWS Free Tier

On-demand

Pay per hour for database instances with no upfront commitment and no long-term contract. 

View detailed pricing

Database savings plan

Commit to a specific amount of usage, measured in $/hour, over a 1-year term and save in exchange for your commitment.

Learn more about savings plans

What problems does Amazon RDS solve?

Time-consuming administration

Abstract tech illustration representing Amazon AI with colorful geometric panels and flowing ribbon shapes in grid structureRDS runs managed relational databases without provisioning infrastructure or maintaining software. Teams remove undifferentiated management tasks such as provisioning, configuring, backing up, and patching, and can create a new database in minutes.

Keep business critical workloads online

Abstract visual of smooth vertical ribbons curving inward and upward, symbolizing business agility through Infor Marketplace on AWSRDS delivers high availability and enterprise reliability out of the box with multi-AZ deployments and automated failover, ensuring business continuity without manual configurations. Your data is synchronously replicated across Availability Zones, so business-critical workloads stay online during instance or AZ disruptions.

Choosing between performance and cost

aws-library_illustration_data_11_1200RDS helps you optimize database performance and costs. You can utilize AWS innovations like custom silicon, the AWS Nitro System, and elastic infrastructure alongside the latest instances, optimized reads and writes, and flexible pricing.

Migrations that require re-architecting

aws-library_illustration_connect_7_1200RDS enables simple lift-and-shift migration from self-managed databases with minimal code changes. It supports PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, SQL Server, Oracle, and Db2. Once in the cloud, your data is next to the agentic AI, ML, and analytics services that need it.

How does Amazon RDS work?

1. Choose your database engine

Choose your database engine and deployment option in the console or API. RDS provisions the instance and configures networking and storage automatically. 

2. Load your data

Load your data using standard tools and connect your application using standard database drivers. Existing open source and commercial applications work with minimal to no code changes. 

3. RDS automates database management

RDS handles backups, patching, and monitoring on your behalf. Multi-AZ deployments synchronously replicate data and manage failover automatically.

4. Scale capacity with demand

Scale compute, storage, or read capacity as demand changes. Features such as optimized reads, optimized writes, and Graviton5-based instances help improve performance.

What are the top Amazon RDS use cases?

Build web and mobile applications

Support growing apps with high availability, throughput, storage scalability, flexible pay-per-use pricing.

Move to managed databases

Innovate and build new applications without self-managing databases, which can be time consuming, complex, and expensive.

Power agentic AI applications

Run vector workloads on Aurora and RDS for PostgreSQL for retrieval and semantic search.

Ready to run a relational database without managing infrastructure?

Try the easy to manage relational databases optimized for total cost of ownership.
Get started with Amazon RDS

Frequently asked questions

    Amazon RDS is built for developers that need reliable, scalable relational databases without the operational burden of managing them, offering a fully managed relational database service that is easy to manage and optimized for total cost of ownership.

    Amazon RDS automates database administrative tasks like provisioning, configuration, backups, and patching, letting you create databases in minutes. It delivers high availability with Multi-AZ deployments and helps you optimize price-performance by leveraging innovation across the AWS stack. It provides a choice of nine engines and the ability to deploy in the cloud or on premises.

    Amazon RDS achieves high availability through multi-AZ deployments that replicate data across multiple Availability Zones. If the primary instance becomes unavailable, RDS automates failover to a standby instance, so applications stay online without manual intervention.

    Amazon RDS supports nine engines: PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, SQL Server, Oracle, Db2, and Amazon Aurora DSQL, Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL-Compatible Edition, and Amazon Aurora MySQL-Compatible Edition. This lets teams deploy the open source or commercial database software they already trust while offloading undifferentiated management tasks.

    Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL and Aurora PostgreSQL-Compatible Edition support vector search for generative AI workloads. With Aurora Optimized Reads and pgvector_hnsw, applications achieve up to 20x improved queries per second compared to pgvector_IVFFLAT, enabling faster retrieval for AI features.

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