# Amazon Aurora vs Prisma Postgres

Canonical: https://inetgeek.com/compare/amazon-aurora-vs-prisma-postgres/

Every value below is read from Amazon Aurora's and Prisma Postgres's own documentation. See https://inetgeek.com/methodology/ for how.

## At a glance

| Criterion | Amazon Aurora | Prisma Postgres |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Free tier | Yes — capped Free plan plus time-limited credits | Yes |
| Pricing model | Pay per use with no plan fee: instances plus storage plus I/O, or ACU-hours in serverless mode. AWS's own worked example prices serverless compute at $0.12 per ACU-hour on Aurora Standard and $0.156 on Aurora I/O-Optimized in US East (N. Virginia) — the difference being whether I/O is metered separately or folded into a higher compute and storage rate. Provisioned instances also offer Reserved Instance pricing, and usage may qualify for Database Savings Plans against a committed hourly spend. | A plan fee plus usage: requests, memory GB-hours, active vCPU-hours and outbound bandwidth are each metered — $1 per million requests beyond the allowance, $0.006 per GB-hour, $0.064 per vCPU-hour, $0.025 per GB out. |
| Engine | MySQL- and PostgreSQL-compatible. Aurora is AWS's own engine rather than a hosted build of either, so compatibility is the claim being made — existing code, tools and applications are stated to work, which is not the same as being the upstream database. | PostgreSQL. |
| Backup retention | 1 to 35 days. Unlike an RDS DB instance it cannot be set to 0 — Aurora backs the cluster volume up continuously and there is no way to turn that off. | Daily backups with 7-day retention on Starter and Pro, 30 days on Business. The free plan has none. |

## Where they differ

### Pricing model

- Amazon Aurora: Pay per use with no plan fee: instances plus storage plus I/O, or ACU-hours in serverless mode. AWS's own worked example prices serverless compute at $0.12 per ACU-hour on Aurora Standard and $0.156 on Aurora I/O-Optimized in US East (N. Virginia) — the difference being whether I/O is metered separately or folded into a higher compute and storage rate. Provisioned instances also offer Reserved Instance pricing, and usage may qualify for Database Savings Plans against a committed hourly spend. ([source](https://aws.amazon.com/rds/aurora/pricing/))
- Prisma Postgres: A plan fee plus usage: requests, memory GB-hours, active vCPU-hours and outbound bandwidth are each metered — $1 per million requests beyond the allowance, $0.006 per GB-hour, $0.064 per vCPU-hour, $0.025 per GB out. ([source](https://www.prisma.io/pricing))

### Engine

- Amazon Aurora: MySQL- and PostgreSQL-compatible. Aurora is AWS's own engine rather than a hosted build of either, so compatibility is the claim being made — existing code, tools and applications are stated to work, which is not the same as being the upstream database. ([source](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/AuroraUserGuide/CHAP_AuroraOverview.html))
- Prisma Postgres: PostgreSQL. ([source](https://www.prisma.io/pricing))

### Backup retention

- Amazon Aurora: 1 to 35 days. Unlike an RDS DB instance it cannot be set to 0 — Aurora backs the cluster volume up continuously and there is no way to turn that off. ([source](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/AuroraUserGuide/Aurora.Managing.Backups.html))
- Prisma Postgres: Daily backups with 7-day retention on Starter and Pro, 30 days on Business. The free plan has none. ([source](https://www.prisma.io/pricing))

## Which should you choose?

Pick Amazon Aurora if Teams on AWS who want a Postgres or MySQL cluster that can throw off a copy-on-write clone of production in minutes, keep up to fifteen readers behind it, and pause to nothing between bursts in serverless mode.

Pick Prisma Postgres if Prisma ORM users who want the database and the client from one vendor, with a pooled connection limit stated per plan rather than left to be discovered.

Consider something else: Amazon Aurora — You want the upstream database rather than a compatible one, or a branch workflow rather than a clone. AWS documents cloning as a way to build a test environment, not as something you do per pull request.

Consider something else: Prisma Postgres — Four separate meters — requests, memory, vCPU and bandwidth — sit on top of the plan fee, so the monthly number is a floor rather than a bill.

## Documented by only one

- Entry paid plan: Prisma Postgres: $10/month for Starter. Pro is $49 and Business $129, each including a larger request allowance.
- Startup credit program: Prisma Postgres: Prisma for Startups: database bill covered up to $10,000 for one year, plus 1:1 guidance. Venture-funded track requires pre-seed/seed/Series-A funding raised in the last 12 months and founded in the last 5 years; bootstrapped track requires ≥5k MRR for 6 months and 2 full-time team members.
- Storage (entry plan): Prisma Postgres: 500 MB on the free plan across 50 databases. Paid plans raise the database count to 1,000 and beyond.
- Managed connection pooling: Prisma Postgres: Supported
- Scales to zero: Amazon Aurora: Supported — serverless capacity mode only
- Regions: Amazon Aurora: 34 AWS regions, the same list for the MySQL- and PostgreSQL-compatible editions. Counted from the two availability tables in Aurora's own docs, which publish the regions and no total.
- Connection limit: Prisma Postgres: 100 pooled connections on Starter and 10 direct; 10 pooled on Free, 500 on Pro and 1,000 on Business.
- When idle: Prisma Postgres: Scales to zero when idle, and Prisma states an idle app costs nothing.
- Database branching: Amazon Aurora: Limited — clones, not a branch workflow
- Point-in-time recovery: Amazon Aurora: Any point inside the backup retention period, so up to 35 days. Aurora's backups are continuous and incremental against the cluster volume rather than periodic snapshots plus log replay, which is why AWS states no performance impact while they are taken.
- Read replicas: Amazon Aurora: Supported — 15 per cluster, a quota AWS will not raise
- Rewind in place: Amazon Aurora: Limited — Aurora MySQL edition only
- ISO 27001: Amazon Aurora: Covered under AWS's account-wide ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification — not scoped per-service the way SOC, HIPAA and PCI DSS are on AWS's own site.
- HIPAA: Amazon Aurora: Listed as a HIPAA-eligible service on AWS's own reference page.
- GDPR / data residency: Amazon Aurora: AWS customers can process personal data on all AWS services in compliance with GDPR, and choose the storage type and geographic region for their data.

## Questions this comparison answers

**Should I choose Amazon Aurora or Prisma Postgres?**

Pick Amazon Aurora if Teams on AWS who want a Postgres or MySQL cluster that can throw off a copy-on-write clone of production in minutes, keep up to fifteen readers behind it, and pause to nothing between bursts in serverless mode.
Pick Prisma Postgres if Prisma ORM users who want the database and the client from one vendor, with a pooled connection limit stated per plan rather than left to be discovered.