# Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) Reviews **Vendor:** Amazon Web Services (AWS) **Category:** [Database as a Service (DBaaS) Providers](https://www.g2.com/categories/database-as-a-service-dbaas) **Average Rating:** 4.5/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 908 ## About Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) makes it easy to set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud. It provides cost-efficient and resizable capacity while managing time-consuming database administration tasks such as hardware provisioning, database setup, patching and backups. It frees you up to focus on your apps so you can give them the better performance, availability, security, and compatibility they need. Amazon RDS is available on 6 familiar database instances: Amazon Aurora, MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, Oracle Database and SQL Server engines. This means that the code, applications, and tools you already use today with your existing databases can be used with Amazon RDS. Amazon RDS automatically patches the database software and backs up your database, storing the backups for a user-defined retention period and enabling point-in-time recovery. You benefit from the flexibility of being able to scale the compute resources or storage capacity associated with your relational database instance via a single API call. In addition, Amazon RDS makes it easy to use replication to enhance availability and reliability for production databases. Amazon RDS for MySQL also enables you to scale out beyond the capacity of a single database deployment for read-heavy database workloads. As with all Amazon Web Services, there are no up-front investments required, and you pay only for the resources you use. ## Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) Pros & Cons **What users like:** - Users find AWS RDS extremely **easy to use** , streamlining setup and supporting multiple programming languages effortlessly. (15 reviews) - Users appreciate the **effortless scalability** of Amazon RDS, ensuring smooth performance during unexpected traffic spikes. (13 reviews) - Users appreciate the **setup ease** of Amazon RDS, quickly deploying production-ready databases without unnecessary complexity. (10 reviews) - Users appreciate the **automated backup services** of Amazon RDS, allowing them to focus on application development without data loss worries. (9 reviews) - Users value the **high availability and reliability** of Amazon RDS, ensuring smooth app performance without maintenance hassles. (9 reviews) - Users appreciate the **easy scalability** of Amazon RDS, making it versatile for growing application demands across projects. (8 reviews) - Users commend the **security and reliability** of Amazon RDS, easing concerns over data loss and downtime. (8 reviews) - Cloud Storage (7 reviews) - Managed Services (7 reviews) - Cloud Services (6 reviews) **What users dislike:** - Users find the **costs prohibitively high** , especially when instances are left open and unused, leading to unexpected expenses. (18 reviews) - Users find the **complexity of service naming** in AWS challenging, making it hard for newcomers to navigate. (7 reviews) - Users experience **performance issues** with RDS, citing latency and variability in a multi-tenant environment. (7 reviews) - Users find the **cost issues** of Amazon RDS concerning, as expenses can rise unexpectedly with usage. (6 reviews) - Users experience noticeable **latency issues** with Amazon RDS, especially during read replica replication processes. (4 reviews) - Learning Difficulty (4 reviews) - Users experience **limited control** over configurations with RDS, impacting customization and management of their databases. (4 reviews) - Limited Storage (3 reviews) - Poor Interface Design (3 reviews) - Poor Usability (3 reviews) ## Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) Reviews ### 1. Streamlined Database Management with Amazon RDS **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Atharva P. | Cloud BI Engineer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 11, 2026 **What do you like best about Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)?** What I like best about Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) is that it simplifies database management by handling backups, batching, scaling, high availability, and automation. It reduces a lot of operational overhead compared to managing databases manually. Automated monitoring, patching, and failover improve reliability and reduce manual maintenance effort. Automated backups simplify recovery and retention. Deployments across multiple availability zones improve availability and reliability. Performance insights enhance query monitoring and optimization, while read replicas improve support for scaling and analytic workloads. Basic setup is straightforward. **What do you dislike about Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)?** VAS can increase as workload scales, especially for high-performance instances and storage. I've also found out that certain low-level database optimization and customization are limited compared to self-managed databases. **What problems is Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) solving and how is that benefiting you?** Amazon RDS removes the operational burden of managing databases by handling backups, scaling, and high availability. It automates tasks like patching and failover, improving reliability and allowing us to focus on application and data work instead of management. ### 2. Effortless Database Management with AWS RDS **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sahil Y. | Cloud Engineer | Cloud Solutions Architect , Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 25, 2024 **What do you like best about Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)?** I like that Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) handles the management of the database infrastructure, which gives me and my team more time to focus on the actual data. The high availability and advanced security features are impressive, making the service more reliable. I find the variety of database engines provided by AWS at one place very convenient, as it simplifies our operations. The AWS-managed databases take over the tedious task of manual database handling, and they provide a fast, reliable, and secure database environment that's critical for us. **What do you dislike about Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)?** In terms of RDS, the block storage is something that can be a problem sometimes as the block has a fixed storage limit which can be critical at the time of storage migration or critical operations. Also, for a beginner, the initial setup can be a bit tedious. **What problems is Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) solving and how is that benefiting you?** Amazon RDS handles tedious manual database tasks, providing fast, reliable, and secure data storage. AWS manages the infrastructure, giving my team more time to focus on the data itself, with high availability and advanced security being standout features. ### 3. Reliable AWS Services for Scalable Data Engineering Workflows **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** mani s. | data engineer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 02, 2026 **What do you like best about Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)?** The best thing I like about Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) is that it simplifies database management and handles production workloads very well. We don’t need to worry about backups and patching because it takes care of that. It also supports multiple database engines like MySQL, which is the best. we mainly use because it scales very well based on work loads **What do you dislike about Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)?** I don’t have any major dislikes about Amazon Relational Database Service. **What problems is Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) solving and how is that benefiting you?** It solves problems by staying highly available all the time, with essentially no downtime. It supports scalable workloads and helps me securely manage transactional and operational data used in ETL, which is where I’ve benefited the most. It also integrates seamlessly with other AWS services. ### 4. RDS : Fully Managed, Highly Availaible, Scalable, Secure database platform **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 24, 2026 **What do you like best about Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)?** RDS has helped ease database management at scale for us. Multi-AZ deployments handle failover seamlessly aiding, Automated backups and point-in-time recovery without any manual effort has helped us with improved availability and disaster recovery. Resizing and Read replicas for our read-heavy workloads has helped with scaling. Performance Insights has impovement observability with spotting of slow queries and bottlenecks. Patching and maintenance has been smooth. **What do you dislike about Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)?** Managed services have higher cost. Also, lack of root access make it difficult to install certain extensions or adjust OS level parameters. Major engine versions upgrates has not be seamless for us. **What problems is Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) solving and how is that benefiting you?** We have lots of varied databases used cause of legacy and have a single unified interface and process for operational (patching, backup & restore, backups, disaster recovery, read replica) has helped a lot in streamlining and consolidation at the organisation level and saving lot of time and effort. ### 5. Amazon RDS Makes Database Management Effortless with Reliable Automation **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** varma k. | F, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 10, 2026 **What do you like best about Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)?** The best thing about Amazon RDS is how it eliminates manual database management. It automatically handles backups, software patching, scaling, and high availability setups up letting you focus on application development instead of infrastructure maintenance. Features like Multi-AZ deployment, read replicas, and point-in-time recovery enhance reliability and performance with minimal effort. **What do you dislike about Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)?** Customization is limited, and there’s no root access. On top of that, the costs can feel unpredictable. I’ve also run into vendor lock-in, downtime during scaling, and limited control over replication, which makes it harder to manage things the way I want. **What problems is Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) solving and how is that benefiting you?** Amazon RDS helps address common database management challenges by automating time-consuming administrative tasks such as hardware provisioning, software patching, backups, and failure recovery. It also improves high availability through Multi-AZ deployments that automatically fail over during outages, helping minimize downtime. In addition, the service supports scalability, so you can upgrade compute or storage with minimal disruption. ### 6. Effortless Migration, Resilience and Great Cost Benefits with RDS **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Prasanth K. | Enterprise Architect | Cloud Transformation Leader | Driving Multi-Cloud Strategy, Solutions | DevSecOps Excellence | Innovation Resilient Infrastructure at Scale, Information Technology and Services, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 01, 2026 **What do you like best about Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)?** - Broke a massive Oracle 11g/12c backed monolith application into 25 microservice‑aligned schemas and migrated everything to Oracle 19c on RDS, giving each service its own performance and scaling boundary. - What I like most about RDS is that we no longer need to spend a lot of time on manual heavy lifting — patching, automated backups, point-in-time restores (to the second), and even provisioning. Tasks like these used to take weeks, involve multiple meetings, and require approval cycles, but are now fully automated and happen in the background with just a simple configuration. - The recovery and failover challenges we previously faced with our monolith have been completely eliminated. By leveraging Amazon RDS’s automated, synchronous replication and Multi-AZ failover capabilities, we’ve gained a level of resilience that promises our application stays online even during a full Availability Zone outage. With 99.95% uptime, we are far more than just resilient (In a worst-case failover scenario, the transition happens in roughly 2 minutes, which is well within our acceptable RTO). - Managing 25 microservices and their rapidly expanding data sets doesn't seem to be a challenge to us, and our operations have been simplified with its configuration-based implementation. With RDS, we have the option to seamlessly scale storage, upgrade instance types, and leverage read replicas to offload traffic. This flexibility has been a cornerstone of our migration journey, delivering significant cost savings and operational efficiency. - We have the option to stop RDS instances of lower environments during weekends or when not in use, saving additional costs. - AWS, as usual, has top-notch customer support for RDS. **What do you dislike about Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)?** - Moving from on-prem to RDS broke our deep New Relic integration; because we no longer have OS-level access to install custom agents, we lost the ability to perform granular, table-level monitoring that we relied on for legacy performance tuning. - We observed that DB gets stuck in the Upgrading/Modifying state during modifications and we really don't have any way to check the actual issue other than just waiting. Sometimes, we are left with just to restart the same, which is quite tedious at times. This really needs some focus from AWS; we, users, need visibility on the progress. - SYSDBA permissions are restricted, but that's not a blocker. **What problems is Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) solving and how is that benefiting you?** - Heavy dependency on manual work for upgrades, scaling, patching, and failover in the on-prem model is completely eliminated, and we’re now operating with nearly an 80% reduction in manual effort—freeing the team to focus on actual engineering instead of routine ops. - Effortless cross‑region failover during outages is a genuine lifesaver, giving us seamless continuity without any significant delay or hick-ups. - The pricing model also delivers significant savings, with deep discounts on on‑demand rates that directly boost our overall cost efficiency. - Instance scheduling for Non‑Prod environments is a huge win, letting us shut down unused instances and pay only for storage instead of full compute. We also benefit directly from AWS’s 99.95% uptime commitment, which gives us reliable availability without the overhead of managing infrastructure ourselves. - Most of our operational work is now fully automated, configuration‑driven, and scheduled, giving us complete control over every activity without the manual overhead that used to slow us down. ### 7. Stable, High-Performing AWS RDS with Useful Query Logs and Insights **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Liam S. | Senior Security Engineer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 08, 2026 **What do you like best about Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)?** AWS RDS offers both PostgreSQL and their tweaked version, Aurora. It is stable and performs well. The query logs and insights are useful to managing the database. **What do you dislike about Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)?** Not much to dislike; the gaps, like query analysers, are available for free. PostgreSQL has a pretty great ecosystem and documentation that surrounds it. **What problems is Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) solving and how is that benefiting you?** Business records are stored safely and securely in AWS RDS. ### 8. Reliable and Hassle-Free Managed Database Service **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Nancy G. | server administrator, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 04, 2026 **What do you like best about Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)?** Its fully managed nature—handling backups, scaling, patching, and high availability automatically—so you can focus on building applications instead of managing databases. **What do you dislike about Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)?** Limited low-level control compared to self-managed databases, especially for advanced tuning and customization. **What problems is Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) solving and how is that benefiting you?** It eliminates the complexity of database setup, maintenance, backups, and scaling, allowing me to focus on application development while improving reliability and saving time. ### 9. A solid Database-as-a-Service option **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Abhik S. | Software Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 17, 2025 **What do you like best about Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)?** Well, RDS is a must as per me if your project is in AWS and you are working on relational databases, Few things I personally liked about Amazon RDS are that most of the operations like patching, backups, scalings etc are automatic so a lot of less effort needed from the operations side, and I don't think any other RDS works as good as Amazon RDS works with AWS. I also found all the operations being performed very smoothly, and I personally never faced any failures while using this, so definitely quite robust too. **What do you dislike about Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)?** There are a few downside too here, first the cost of using this I feel is too high, initially the cost might seem normal but as your application scales cost increases a lot. Also I felt there is very less control over the database server which didn't let me customize a few things I wanted to. Also If a few more monitoring tools can definitely help the user to troubleshoot. **What problems is Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) solving and how is that benefiting you?** I personally used it as a Database-as-a-Service for my project which had relational databases, and I really found most of things were quite easy and clean as many major tasks were automated saving me a lot of time. ### 10. Reliable managed database with automated backups **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Happy M. | Software Engineer, Information Technology and Services, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 29, 2026 **What do you like best about Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)?** I like the automated backups and patching. It takes care of routine database maintenance, which saves a lot of time and reduces the risk of errors. The multi-AZ replication feature is also great for ensuring uptime. **What do you dislike about Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)?** Scaling can be a bit tricky for very large workloads, and cost can grow if you need high availability across regions. **What problems is Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) solving and how is that benefiting you?** It removes the overhead of managing database infrastructure while ensuring data durability. That lets us focus on building applications, rather than spending time on maintenance tasks like backups or dealing with downtime. ## Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) Discussions - [What is Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) used for?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-amazon-relational-database-service-rds-used-for) - 2 comments, 2 upvotes - [An Amazon RDS performance best practice is to allocate enough RAM so that your working set resides almost completely in memory.](https://www.g2.com/discussions/an-amazon-rds-performance-best-practice-is-to-allocate-enough-ram-so-that-your-working-set-resides-almost-completely-in-memory) - 1 comment, 1 upvote - [View Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/amazon-relational-database-service-rds/reviews/amazon-relational-database-service-rds-review-5075101?section=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-06-04+13%3A35%3A19+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=77bee022-e70c-4e91-819c-fb1ca2445026&secure%5Btoken%5D=017946e6653aa6bb6120a6e069acc5ab0ccc978c2177fbda2ed4351cb16c2404&format=llm_user) ## Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) Integrations - [Amazon Aurora](https://www.g2.com/products/amazon-aurora/reviews) - [Amazon DynamoDB](https://www.g2.com/products/amazon-web-services-aws-amazon-dynamodb/reviews) - [Amazon EC2](https://www.g2.com/products/amazon-ec2/reviews) - [Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS)](https://www.g2.com/products/amazon-elastic-container-service-amazon-ecs/reviews) - [Amazon Elastic Interface](https://www.g2.com/products/amazon-elastic-interface/reviews) - [Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS)](https://www.g2.com/products/amazon-elastic-kubernetes-service-amazon-eks/reviews) - [Amazon Redshift](https://www.g2.com/products/amazon-redshift/reviews) - [Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC)](https://www.g2.com/products/amazon-virtual-private-cloud-amazon-vpc/reviews) - [AWS Auto Scaling](https://www.g2.com/products/aws-auto-scaling/reviews) - [AWS Cloud9](https://www.g2.com/products/aws-cloud9/reviews) - [AWS Cloud Development Kit (AWS CDK)](https://www.g2.com/products/aws-cloud-development-kit-aws-cdk/reviews) - [AWS CloudFormation](https://www.g2.com/products/aws-aws-cloudformation/reviews) - [AWS Elastic Beanstalk](https://www.g2.com/products/aws-elastic-beanstalk/reviews) - [AWS Fargate](https://www.g2.com/products/aws-fargate/reviews) - [AWS Glue](https://www.g2.com/products/aws-glue/reviews) - [AWS Lambda](https://www.g2.com/products/aws-lambda/reviews) - [Django](https://www.g2.com/products/django/reviews) - [Express.js](https://www.g2.com/products/express-js/reviews) - [GitLab](https://www.g2.com/products/gitlab/reviews) - [Hibernate](https://www.g2.com/products/hibernate/reviews) - [JDBC Driver Pack](https://www.g2.com/products/jdbc-driver-pack/reviews) - [Jenkins](https://www.g2.com/products/jenkins/reviews) - [Microsoft Power BI](https://www.g2.com/products/microsoft-microsoft-power-bi/reviews) - [Sage eCommerce](https://www.g2.com/products/sage-ecommerce/reviews) - [Trend Vision One - Endpoint Security](https://www.g2.com/products/trend-vision-one-endpoint-security/reviews) ## Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) Features **Management ** - Data Schema - Query Language - ACID - Complaint - Data Replication **Configuration** - Application Performance - Orchestration - Database Monitoring - Anomaly Detection - Network Security **Support ** - Text Search - Data Types - Languages - Operating Systems **Database Administration** - Provisioning - Governance **Security** - Database Locking - Access Control - Encryption - Authentication **Availability** - Scalability - Backup - Indexing **Security** - Data Masking - Authentication And Single Sign-On - Data Anonymization **Performance ** - Disaster Recovery - Data Concurrency - Workload Management - Advanced Indexing - Query Optimizer **Data Management** - Data Replication - Advanced Data Analytics **Database Features** - Storage - Availability - Stability - Scalability - Security - Data Manipulation - Query Language ## Top Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) Alternatives - [Oracle Database](https://www.g2.com/products/oracle-database/reviews) - 4.3/5.0 (927 reviews) - [IBM Db2](https://www.g2.com/products/ibm-db2/reviews) - 4.1/5.0 (598 reviews) - [SAP HANA Cloud](https://www.g2.com/products/sap-hana-cloud-2025-10-01/reviews) - 4.3/5.0 (522 reviews)