Skip to content
inetGeek

Amazon RDS vs Nile

SEPT 2026 audit

A comparison of Amazon RDS and Nile built from values read directly from each provider's own documentation, with the source recorded against every figure.

Reviewed by Palash BagchiUpdated 28 criteria comparedSources last checked

The short answer

Choose Amazon RDS if…

Teams already inside AWS, where the database sitting in the same VPC as everything else is worth more than any single feature on this page. Six engines, up to 35 days of point-in-time recovery, and read replicas you create and delete yourself.

Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved

Choose Nile if…

Multi-tenant SaaS where every customer wants isolation — Nile makes a database per tenant the default shape rather than something you build on top of Postgres.

Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved

Consider something else if…

  • Amazon RDS: You want a database per pull request. RDS documents no branching, and replicas are manual — AWS states outright that it does not autoscale them.
  • Nile: Several of the features on its own pricing table are marked Coming soon, including branching, backups and provisioned compute, so what is bought today is narrower than the table suggests.

Neither quite fits? Every other option, ranked by iScore: Amazon RDS alternatives · Nile alternatives

15 sourced criteria separate them — see where, with sources, below.

Visit Amazon RDS documentationVisit Nile documentation

No affiliate links, sponsored placements or paid rankings appear on this site. Ordering follows the sourced data and the stated criteria.

01.

At a glance.

CriterionAmazon RDSNile
Pricing
Free tier
No — Free usage is time-boxed (6 months on the Free plan, 12 months legacy), not an ongoing free plan.
Yes — Ongoing $0 Free plan: 50M query tokens, 1 GB storage, 500 connections, no pauses.
Kind of free offerIntroductory free tierFree tier
Entry paid plan$0.016 per DB instance-hour on-demand for db.t4g.micro, the smallest DB instance class — RDS for MySQL, Single-AZ, US East (N. Virginia). No plan fee or minimum: instance-hours, storage and backups are billed separately. Cheapest of the 216 on-demand rates in this feed; db.t3.micro is next at $0.017.$15/month for Pro, which carries a production SLA. Scale is $350/month.
Pricing modelOn-Demand DB instance hours billed per second with a 10-minute minimum, plus provisioned storage, backup storage and data transfer; Reserved Instances discount 1- or 3-year commitments.Priced on queries rather than instances, with a $15 base for Pro. Nile's own framing is "Pay for queries, not for instances", and additional tokens are $0.05 per million.
Limits
Storage (entry plan)Minimum 20 GiB of General Purpose SSD storage per DB instance, selectable up to 64 TiB (RDS for MySQL, gp2 or gp3).5 GB on Pro, then $1.00 per additional GB.
Memory (entry plan)1 GiB of memory and 2 vCPU on the db.t4g.micro DB instance class, the smallest burstable class listed in the RDS hardware specifications.No memory figure published: serverless compute is billed in query tokens, abstract units of CPU and memory, 50 million included on the Free plan.
Execution
Managed connection poolingSupportedSupported
Infrastructure
Regions
39 geographic regions and 124 Availability Zones across the AWS Cloud — AWS-wide footprint; the RDS User Guide lists RDS Regions individually and publishes no total.
Two regions selectable for a new database: AWS_US_WEST_2 (AWS US West, Oregon) and AWS_EU_CENTRAL_1 (AWS Europe, Frankfurt). The separate list-available-regions endpoint enumerates a third value, AZURE_EASTUS.
Data
EnginePostgreSQL, alongside MySQL, MariaDB, Oracle, SQL Server and Db2. Each engine is a separate RDS product with its own version list and its own feature support, so a capability documented for one is not a capability of RDS as a whole.PostgreSQL, with tenant isolation as a first-class concept — databases, tenant databases and vector embeddings are all described as unlimited.
Connection limitNot a fixed number: RDS for PostgreSQL sets max_connections by formula from the instance's memory — LEAST({DBInstanceClassMemory/9531392}, 5000) — so a bigger instance class gets more connections and the ceiling is 5,000 however large it is. The parameter can be set by hand anywhere from 6 to 262,143, which is a limit on what you may configure rather than what an instance will serve. Other engines use different divisors: MySQL is memory/12582880 with no cap.10,000 connections on Pro, with connection pooling included.
When idleA DB instance can be stopped for at most 7 consecutive days, with no instance-hour charges while stopped but provisioned storage and backups still billed; RDS then starts it automatically.No cold start on Pro — Nile lists it as a plan feature rather than a behaviour to configure.
Backup retentionBetween 0 and 35 days, set per DB instance; 0 disables automated backups entirely. The default depends on how the instance was created — one day via the API or CLI, seven days via the console — so there is no single default to quote. Multi-AZ DB clusters cannot be set below 1 day.Three backups taken daily; restore is request-based through support and available on paid tiers only. No retention window is published.
Compliance
SOC 2
Listed as SOC-compliant on AWS's own compliance scope page.
Listed on the pricing plan comparison as 'Coming soon'; the Free and Pro columns show '-' for SOC 2.
GDPR / data residencyAWS customers can process personal data on all AWS services in compliance with GDPR, and choose the storage type and geographic region for their data.Region choice covers residency: a database can be provisioned in eu-central-1 (Frankfurt), which Nile presents as easing EU data-residency rules. From Nile's 2024-04-10 regions announcement; the live API region enum still lists AWS_EU_CENTRAL_1.
Encryption at rest
AES-256 encryption of the underlying storage, logs, automated backups, read replicas and snapshots for DB instances created as encrypted.
Stated for Nile Auth: all communication is encrypted using TLS and all stored data is encrypted at rest. Read in the Nile Auth FAQ; Nile publishes no platform-wide security page.
Dedicated infrastructureA DB instance can run in a VPC whose instance tenancy is set to dedicated, restricted to approved EC2 dedicated instance types; a dedicated host is not guaranteed.Provisioned compute is dedicated to a single Nile customer; tenants can be placed on either serverless or provisioned compute. The pricing page separately marks Provisioned Compute 'Coming soon' (upto 4 VCPU on Pro).

Only criteria both providers publish appear here; a tinted cell marks a real difference. Criteria only one of them documents are listed below, and an absence there means we found no source — not that the feature is missing. How we source this.

The small bar above a value is inetGeek's own lean toward that side — computed from the same facts shown, never a number the provider published. See the picker below "The short answer" to weigh only the criteria you care about.

02.

Where they differ.

Free tier

Amazon RDS
No — Free usage is time-boxed (6 months on the Free plan, 12 months legacy), not an ongoing free plan.
Nile
Yes — Ongoing $0 Free plan: 50M query tokens, 1 GB storage, 500 connections, no pauses.
Sources (2) →
  • Amazon RDS Free Tier ↗

    “With Free plan, you can explore Aurora and RDS for up to 6 months without any commitments or cost. [...] If you activated your free tier account prior to July 15th, 2025, you can continue to use select RDS instances for free up to 12 months after your sign-up date.”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction

  • Pricing | Nile Database ↗

    “For prototyping or side projects. No pauses, always available [...] This enables us to provide unlimited DBs for free tier”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction

Kind of free offer

Amazon RDS
Introductory free tier
Nile
Free tier
Sources (2) →
  • Amazon RDS Free Tier ↗

    “With Free plan, you can explore Aurora and RDS for up to 6 months without any commitments or cost. [...] If you activated your free tier account prior to July 15th, 2025, you can continue to use select RDS instances for free up to 12 months after your sign-up date.”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction

  • Pricing | Nile Database ↗

    “For prototyping or side projects. No pauses, always available [...] This enables us to provide unlimited DBs for free tier”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction

Entry paid plan

Amazon RDS
$0.016 per DB instance-hour on-demand for db.t4g.micro, the smallest DB instance class — RDS for MySQL, Single-AZ, US East (N. Virginia). No plan fee or minimum: instance-hours, storage and backups are billed separately. Cheapest of the 216 on-demand rates in this feed; db.t3.micro is next at $0.017.
Nile
$15/month for Pro, which carries a production SLA. Scale is $350/month.
Sources (2) →

Pricing model

Amazon RDS
On-Demand DB instance hours billed per second with a 10-minute minimum, plus provisioned storage, backup storage and data transfer; Reserved Instances discount 1- or 3-year commitments.
Nile
Priced on queries rather than instances, with a $15 base for Pro. Nile's own framing is "Pay for queries, not for instances", and additional tokens are $0.05 per million.
Sources (2) →
  • Amazon RDS for MySQL pricing ↗

    “Option to pay as you go with no upfront fees or minimum commitments with On-Demand or Reserved Instances at a discounted rate. Pay only for what you use. [...] On-Demand database (DB) Instances let you pay for compute capacity by the hour your DB instance runs. [...] Amazon RDS for MySQL supports per-second billing in which partial DB instance hours consumed are billed in one-second increments with a 10-minute minimum.”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction

  • Pricing — Nile ↗

    “Pay for queries Not for instances [...] 0.05 per million additional tokens Storage 5 GB $1.00 per additional GB”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing · Report a correction

Storage (entry plan)

Amazon RDS
Minimum 20 GiB of General Purpose SSD storage per DB instance, selectable up to 64 TiB (RDS for MySQL, gp2 or gp3).
Nile
5 GB on Pro, then $1.00 per additional GB.
Sources (2) →
  • Amazon RDS for MySQL pricing ↗

    “Amazon RDS provides you the ability to select from 20 GiB to 64 TiB of associated General Purpose SSD storage capacity for your primary data set. [...] gp3 volumes have a baseline performance of 3,000 IOPS and 125 MB/s throughput.”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction

  • Pricing — Nile ↗

    “Storage 5 GB $1.00 per additional GB SLA 99.95%”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing · Report a correction

Memory (entry plan)

Amazon RDS
1 GiB of memory and 2 vCPU on the db.t4g.micro DB instance class, the smallest burstable class listed in the RDS hardware specifications.
Nile
No memory figure published: serverless compute is billed in query tokens, abstract units of CPU and memory, 50 million included on the Free plan.
Sources (2) →

Regions

Amazon RDS

39 geographic regions and 124 Availability Zones across the AWS Cloud

Nile

Two regions selectable for a new database: AWS_US_WEST_2 (AWS US West, Oregon) and AWS_EU_CENTRAL_1 (AWS Europe, Frankfurt). The separate list-available-regions endpoint enumerates a third value, AZURE_EASTUS.

Sources (2) →

Engine

Amazon RDS
PostgreSQL, alongside MySQL, MariaDB, Oracle, SQL Server and Db2. Each engine is a separate RDS product with its own version list and its own feature support, so a capability documented for one is not a capability of RDS as a whole.
Nile
PostgreSQL, with tenant isolation as a first-class concept — databases, tenant databases and vector embeddings are all described as unlimited.
Sources (2) →

Connection limit

Amazon RDS
Not a fixed number: RDS for PostgreSQL sets max_connections by formula from the instance's memory — LEAST({DBInstanceClassMemory/9531392}, 5000) — so a bigger instance class gets more connections and the ceiling is 5,000 however large it is. The parameter can be set by hand anywhere from 6 to 262,143, which is a limit on what you may configure rather than what an instance will serve. Other engines use different divisors: MySQL is memory/12582880 with no cap.
Nile
10,000 connections on Pro, with connection pooling included.
Sources (2) →

When idle

Amazon RDS
A DB instance can be stopped for at most 7 consecutive days, with no instance-hour charges while stopped but provisioned storage and backups still billed; RDS then starts it automatically.
Nile
No cold start on Pro — Nile lists it as a plan feature rather than a behaviour to configure.
Sources (2) →
  • Stopping an Amazon RDS DB instance temporarily - Amazon RDS User Guide ↗

    “You can stop your DB instance intermittently for temporary testing or for a daily development activity, for a maximum of 7 consecutive days. [...] While the instance is stopped, you're not charged for DB instance hours. [...] If you don't manually start your DB instance after it is stopped for seven consecutive days, RDS automatically starts your DB instance for you.”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction

  • Pricing — Nile ↗

    “Connection pooling Workspace sharing No cold start Provisioned Compute Coming soon”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing · Report a correction

Backup retention

Amazon RDS
Between 0 and 35 days, set per DB instance; 0 disables automated backups entirely. The default depends on how the instance was created — one day via the API or CLI, seven days via the console — so there is no single default to quote. Multi-AZ DB clusters cannot be set below 1 day.
Nile
Three backups taken daily; restore is request-based through support and available on paid tiers only. No retention window is published.
Sources (2) →
  • Backup retention period — Amazon Relational Database Service User Guide ↗

    “If you create a DB instance using the Amazon RDS API or the AWS CLI and if you don't set the backup retention period, the default backup retention period is one day. If you create a DB instance using the console, the default backup retention period is seven days. [...] You can set the backup retention period of a DB instance to between 0 and 35 days. Setting the backup retention period to 0 disables automated backups. For a Multi-AZ DB cluster, you can set the backup retention period to between 1 and 35 days.”

    Read 2026-09-09 · official docs · Report a correction

  • Backup and Restore ↗

    “This is available for paid tiers only. We hope to make this process self-serve soon. [...] We take three backups daily to ensure your data is well-protected.”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction

SOC 2

Amazon RDS
Listed as SOC-compliant on AWS's own compliance scope page.
Nile
Listed on the pricing plan comparison as 'Coming soon'; the Free and Pro columns show '-' for SOC 2.
Sources (2) →

GDPR / data residency

Amazon RDS
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.
Nile
Region choice covers residency: a database can be provisioned in eu-central-1 (Frankfurt), which Nile presents as easing EU data-residency rules. From Nile's 2024-04-10 regions announcement; the live API region enum still lists AWS_EU_CENTRAL_1.
Sources (2) →
  • GDPR — Amazon Web Services ↗

    “AWS customers can use all AWS services to process personal data [...] in compliance with the GDPR. [...] Customers have control of their customer data. With AWS, customers can: Determine where their customer data will be stored, including the type of storage and geographic region of that storage.”

    Read 2026-09-12 · official site · Report a correction

  • Introducing: SaaS Anywhere on Postgres - for Speed and Compliance ↗

    “We started with us-west-2 (Oregon) and you now have the option to also provision a database in eu-central-1 (Frankfurt). [...] There are many regions with strict data residency regulations: EU, UK, parts of Canada, Japan, Australia [...] Having databases in the relevant regions make this a lot simpler and safer.”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction

Encryption at rest

Amazon RDS
AES-256 encryption of the underlying storage, logs, automated backups, read replicas and snapshots for DB instances created as encrypted.
Nile
Stated for Nile Auth: all communication is encrypted using TLS and all stored data is encrypted at rest. Read in the Nile Auth FAQ; Nile publishes no platform-wide security page.
Sources (2) →
  • Encrypting Amazon RDS resources - Amazon RDS User Guide ↗

    “Data that is encrypted at rest includes the underlying storage for DB instances, its logs, automated backups, read replicas, and snapshots. [...] Amazon RDS encrypted DB instances use the industry standard AES-256 encryption algorithm to encrypt your data on the server that hosts your Amazon RDS DB instances.”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction

  • Nile Auth FAQ - Security ↗

    “Nile Auth uses industry standard security best practices. All communication is encrypted using TLS, all stored data is encrypted at rest.”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction

Dedicated infrastructure

Amazon RDS
A DB instance can run in a VPC whose instance tenancy is set to dedicated, restricted to approved EC2 dedicated instance types; a dedicated host is not guaranteed.
Nile
Provisioned compute is dedicated to a single Nile customer; tenants can be placed on either serverless or provisioned compute. The pricing page separately marks Provisioned Compute 'Coming soon' (upto 4 VCPU on Pro).
Sources (2) →

When these numbers change, hear about it. Sources are re-checked monthly; a repricing goes out as a short note.

Confirm by email; unsubscribe from any issue. Your address goes to Kit and nowhere else — what we do with it.

03.

Documented by only one.

These criteria are published by one provider and not the other. An absence here means we have not found a source, not that the feature is missing — except where we say we read the other provider's own page on a given date and it does not state it. Those rows lean, and the provider can correct them with a link.

When the free offer endsAmazon RDS: 6 months from account creation.
Uptime SLAAmazon RDS: 99.95% for a Multi-AZ DB instance or cluster; 99.5% for a single DB instance, which is what you get without enabling Multi-AZ. Both are service-credit thresholds.
Database branchingNile: Not supported — Pricing marks Branching 'Coming soon': one branch Free, 50 Pro, unlimited Scale.
Point-in-time recoveryAmazon RDS: Any point inside the configured backup retention period, so up to 35 days. Transaction logs are uploaded to S3 every five minutes, which is what bounds how close to now the latest restorable time can be.
Read replicasAmazon RDS: Supported — 15 per primary, raisable on request
Rewind in placeAmazon RDS: Not supported — Point-in-time restore creates a new DB instance without modifying the source; no in-place rewind.
ISO 27001Amazon RDS: 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.
HIPAAAmazon RDS: Listed as a HIPAA-eligible service on AWS's own reference page. — SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, Db2 and MariaDB engines only.
PCI DSSAmazon RDS: Listed as PCI DSS-compliant on AWS's own compliance scope page.
Customer-managed keysAmazon RDS: An encrypted DB instance can use a customer managed AWS KMS key instead of the AWS managed key, with key policies and CloudTrail auditing in AWS KMS.
Role-based access controlAmazon RDS: AWS IAM identity-based policies, roles and managed policies control access to RDS resources; IAM database authentication is available for MariaDB, MySQL and PostgreSQL.
Private networking / VPCAmazon RDS: DB instances launch into an Amazon VPC with customer-chosen IP ranges, subnets and access control lists, at no additional cost.
04.

Questions this comparison answers.

Entry paid plan: Amazon RDS or Nile?

Amazon RDS: $0.016 per DB instance-hour on-demand for db.t4g.micro, the smallest DB instance class — RDS for MySQL, Single-AZ, US East (N. Virginia). No plan fee or minimum: instance-hours, storage and backups are billed separately. Cheapest of the 216 on-demand rates in this feed; db.t3.micro is next at $0.017.

Nile: $15/month for Pro, which carries a production SLA. Scale is $350/month.

Free tier: Amazon RDS or Nile?

Amazon RDS: No — Free usage is time-boxed (6 months on the Free plan, 12 months legacy), not an ongoing free plan.

Nile: Yes — Ongoing $0 Free plan: 50M query tokens, 1 GB storage, 500 connections, no pauses.

Storage (entry plan): Amazon RDS or Nile?

Amazon RDS: Minimum 20 GiB of General Purpose SSD storage per DB instance, selectable up to 64 TiB (RDS for MySQL, gp2 or gp3).

Nile: 5 GB on Pro, then $1.00 per additional GB.

Should I choose Amazon RDS or Nile?

Pick Amazon RDS if Teams already inside AWS, where the database sitting in the same VPC as everything else is worth more than any single feature on this page. Six engines, up to 35 days of point-in-time recovery, and read replicas you create and delete yourself.

Pick Nile if Multi-tenant SaaS where every customer wants isolation — Nile makes a database per tenant the default shape rather than something you build on top of Postgres.

Provider pages

Amazon RDSAWS managed relational database service running PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, Oracle, SQL Server and Db2 on provisioned DB instances.NilePostgres reshaped around tenants, with per-tenant databases and vector embeddings included rather than metered separately.

Related comparisons

Aiven vs Amazon RDSAmazon Aurora vs NileAmazon RDS vs Amazon AuroraAmazon RDS vs PlanetScaleAmazon RDS vs Prisma PostgresAmazon RDS vs ScaleGridAmazon RDS vs TigerDataNeon vs Nile

Comments

Every page here is sourced and dated.