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Amazon RDS

FTV43

Amazon RDS's free allowance is an intro tier: new accounts get a larger allowance that steps down to a smaller permanent free tier after the intro period.

About

Amazon RDS is a fully managed relational database service designed to simplify database operations at scale. It helps teams provision, configure, back up, patch, and operate relational databases without managing the underlying infrastructure.

The service supports multiple popular database engines and deployment options, making it suitable for a wide range of application and enterprise workloads. It is built to help organizations improve availability, reduce administrative overhead, and manage database costs more effectively.

  • Managed provisioning, configuration, backups, and patching
  • Support for multiple relational database engines
  • Flexible deployment options for cloud and hybrid environments
  • High availability features for production workloads
  • Cost optimization through on-demand and reserved pricing models

Free Tier Value

43
FTV score
Est. value$14 / month
Trial length12 days
Credit cardNot stated
Feature parity85%

This free tier is a capped 12-month intro offer, not an unlimited ongoing plan, and it does not say a credit card is unnecessary. Using AWS’s own paid RDS reference point, the included single-AZ DB instance allowance is roughly equivalent to a db.t3.micro class instance, which is about $13/month, plus about $1 for the included storage and backup allowances, so the practical value is around $14/month.

How FTV is calculated →

What's included in the free tier

Verified

  • Up to 750 instance hours per month on select single-AZ databases for 12 months.
  • Eligible engines: MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, or SQL Server Express Edition only.
  • 20 GB of General Purpose SSD (gp2) storage per month for 1 year.
  • 20 GB of automated database backup storage per month for 1 year.
  • Free Tier credits valid for up to 12 months for post-July 15, 2025 signups.
  • $100 in credits, plus up to an additional $100 for foundational AWS services, for eligible post-July 15, 2025 signups.

See Amazon RDS pricing for current limits.

Paid plans

Amazon RDS On-Demand Instances

Usage-based
Pay for compute capacity per hour your DB instance runs
DB instance hours
per hour
Billing granularity
per second
Minimum charge
10 minutes
  • No long-term commitments
  • Per-second billing with 10-minute minimum
  • Suitable for short-term, spiky, or unpredictable workloads
  • Recommended for development and testing

Amazon RDS Reserved Instances

Usage-based
1-year or 3-year term; No Upfront, Partial Upfront, All Upfront
term
1 year or 3 years
payment options
No Upfront, Partial Upfront, All Upfront
  • Discounted versus On-Demand
  • 1-year or 3-year commitment
  • Multiple payment options
  • Best for steady-state workloads

Amazon RDS Extended Support

Usage-based
Priced per vCPU per hour or per ACU per hour, depending on engine/deployment
vCPU
per hour
ACU
per hour
  • Applies to older MySQL and PostgreSQL major versions
  • Provides security and bug fixes after community end-of-life
  • Pricing depends on calendar date
  • Available for provisioned instances and Aurora Serverless v2

Pricing extracted from Amazon RDS's pricing page. Always verify current pricing before committing.

Common questions

Is Amazon RDS free forever?

Partly. Amazon RDS gives new accounts a larger allowance at first, which then steps down to a smaller permanent free tier.

What is Amazon RDS's free tier worth?

Amazon RDS's free tier is worth about $14 per month. That maps to an FTV score of 43/100. The FTV score is explained at freetier.co/ftv.