# Amazon RDS

Canonical: https://inetgeek.com/databases/amazon-rds/

AWS managed relational database service running PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, Oracle, SQL Server and Db2 on provisioned DB instances.

## Who it suits

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.

Consider something else if You want a database per pull request. RDS documents no branching, and replicas are manual — AWS states outright that it does not autoscale them.

## iScore

67 / 100 (80% interval 62–73), rank 9 of 14 in databases — interval overlaps the next rank, so this is an ordering, not a finding.

inetGeek's own reading, computed from sourced facts against category peers by disclosed rules. Not a provider claim. Intervals are 80%; a provider with few documented facts is pulled toward the category middle rather than scored on what little is known.
Read this score with care:
- Capacity and limits is thin: 3 of 7 criteria are scored, so it sits near the category middle with a wide interval (41–54). Read the interval, not the point.
- Capabilities is thin: 2 of 5 criteria are scored, so it sits near the category middle with a wide interval (68–81). Read the interval, not the point.
- Adoption is thin: 0 of 1 criteria are scored, so it sits near the category middle with a wide interval (8–99). Read the interval, not the point.
- Documented but not scored, because the page states it as text with no comparable number or a yes/limited/no (a one-time, usage-based or other-vendor price, or a per-site choice): minimum_paid_price, backup_retention, entry_plan_storage, max_connections, pitr_window, read_replicas. Read them on the provider page; the score neither rewards nor penalises what it could not compare.

Method: https://inetgeek.com/iscore/. Full output with every criterion's basis: https://inetgeek.com/scores.json. Every databases peer ranked: https://inetgeek.com/databases/amazon-rds/alternatives/

- Price: 63 (51–75), weight 25%, 3 of 6 criteria scored; scored for peers, not here — undocumented or stated without a number or a yes/limited/no: egress_overage_price, free_card_required, minimum_paid_price
- Capacity and limits: 48 (41–54), weight 20%, 3 of 7 criteria scored; scored for peers, not here — undocumented or stated without a number or a yes/limited/no: backup_retention, entry_plan_storage, max_connections, pitr_window
- Capabilities: 75 (68–81), weight 20%, 2 of 5 criteria scored; scored for peers, not here — undocumented or stated without a number or a yes/limited/no: branching, read_replicas, scale_to_zero
- Trust and compliance: 80 (75–86), weight 15%, 11 of 13 criteria scored; scored for peers, not here — undocumented or stated without a number or a yes/limited/no: audit_logs, support_included
- Evidence: 97 (97–97), weight 10%, 4 of 4 criteria scored
- Adoption: 53 (8–99), weight 10%, 0 of 1 criteria scored

## What the documentation says

### Pricing

- Free tier: No — Free usage is time-boxed (6 months on the Free plan, 12 months legacy), not an ongoing free plan. ([source](https://aws.amazon.com/rds/free/), read 2026-09-13)
- Kind of free offer: Introductory free tier ([source](https://aws.amazon.com/rds/free/), read 2026-09-13)
- When the free offer ends: 6 months from account creation. ([source](https://aws.amazon.com/rds/free/), read 2026-09-13)
- 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. ([source](https://b0.p.awsstatic.com/pricing/2.0/meteredUnitMaps/rds/USD/current/rds-mysql-reservedinstance-singleaz/US%20East%20%28N.%20Virginia%29/1%20year/No%20Upfront/index.json), read 2026-09-13)
- Pricing model: 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. ([source](https://aws.amazon.com/rds/mysql/pricing/), read 2026-09-13)

### 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). ([source](https://aws.amazon.com/rds/mysql/pricing/), read 2026-09-13)
- 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. ([source](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/Concepts.DBInstanceClass.Summary.html), read 2026-09-13)

### Execution

- Managed connection pooling: Supported ([source](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/rds-proxy.html), read 2026-09-09)

### 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. ([source](https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/global-infrastructure/), read 2026-09-13)
- Uptime SLA: 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. ([source](https://aws.amazon.com/rds/sla/), read 2026-09-14)

### Data

- Engine: 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. ([source](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/CHAP_PostgreSQL.html), read 2026-09-09)
- Connection limit: 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. ([source](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/CHAP_Limits.html), read 2026-09-09)
- When idle: 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. ([source](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/USER_StopInstance.html), read 2026-09-13)
- Point-in-time recovery: 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. ([source](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/USER_PIT.html), read 2026-09-09)
- Read replicas: Supported — 15 per primary, raisable on request ([source](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/CHAP_Limits.html), read 2026-09-09)
- Backup retention: 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. ([source](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/USER_WorkingWithAutomatedBackups.BackupRetention.html), read 2026-09-09)
- Rewind in place: Not supported — Point-in-time restore creates a new DB instance without modifying the source; no in-place rewind. ([source](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/USER_PIT.html), read 2026-09-13)

### Compliance

- SOC 2: Listed as SOC-compliant on AWS's own compliance scope page. ([source](https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/services-in-scope/SOC/), read 2026-09-13)
- ISO 27001: 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. ([source](https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/iso-27001-faqs/), read 2026-09-12)
- HIPAA: Listed as a HIPAA-eligible service on AWS's own reference page. — SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, Db2 and MariaDB engines only. ([source](https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/hipaa-eligible-services-reference/), read 2026-09-13)
- GDPR / data residency: 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. ([source](https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/gdpr-center/), read 2026-09-12)
- PCI DSS: Listed as PCI DSS-compliant on AWS's own compliance scope page. ([source](https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/services-in-scope/PCI/), read 2026-09-13)
- Encryption at rest: AES-256 encryption of the underlying storage, logs, automated backups, read replicas and snapshots for DB instances created as encrypted. ([source](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/Overview.Encryption.html), read 2026-09-13)
- Customer-managed keys: 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. ([source](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/Overview.Encryption.html), read 2026-09-13)
- Role-based access control: AWS IAM identity-based policies, roles and managed policies control access to RDS resources; IAM database authentication is available for MariaDB, MySQL and PostgreSQL. ([source](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/UsingWithRDS.IAM.html), read 2026-09-13)
- Private networking / VPC: DB instances launch into an Amazon VPC with customer-chosen IP ranges, subnets and access control lists, at no additional cost. ([source](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/USER_VPC.html), read 2026-09-13)
- Dedicated infrastructure: 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. ([source](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/USER_VPC.WorkingWithRDSInstanceinaVPC.html), read 2026-09-13)

## Compared with

- [Amazon RDS vs Amazon Aurora](https://inetgeek.com/compare/amazon-rds-vs-amazon-aurora/)
- [Amazon RDS vs Aiven](https://inetgeek.com/compare/aiven-vs-amazon-rds/)
- [Amazon RDS vs Crunchy Bridge](https://inetgeek.com/compare/amazon-rds-vs-crunchy-bridge/)
- [Amazon RDS vs Neo4j](https://inetgeek.com/compare/amazon-rds-vs-neo4j/)
- [Amazon RDS vs Neon](https://inetgeek.com/compare/amazon-rds-vs-neon/)
- [Amazon RDS vs Nile](https://inetgeek.com/compare/amazon-rds-vs-nile/)
- [Amazon RDS vs PlanetScale](https://inetgeek.com/compare/amazon-rds-vs-planetscale/)
- [Amazon RDS vs Prisma Postgres](https://inetgeek.com/compare/amazon-rds-vs-prisma-postgres/)
- [Amazon RDS vs ScaleGrid](https://inetgeek.com/compare/amazon-rds-vs-scalegrid/)
- [Amazon RDS vs Supabase](https://inetgeek.com/compare/amazon-rds-vs-supabase/)
- [Amazon RDS vs TigerData](https://inetgeek.com/compare/amazon-rds-vs-tigerdata/)
- [Amazon RDS vs Turso](https://inetgeek.com/compare/amazon-rds-vs-turso/)