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
Amazon RDS pricing is usage-based, with On-Demand and Reserved Instances listed on the pricing page. For the intro-tier free tier, the page states up to 750 instance hours/month plus 20 GB gp2 storage and 20 GB automated backup storage for 12 months; using the provided conservative anchors, that is approximately $13 for 750 hours of db.t3.micro-equivalent compute plus $3 for 20 GB EBS-like storage and about $5 for backup storage, totaling about $21/month. The page also states post-July 15, 2025 signups receive $100 in credits plus up to an additional $100 for foundational AWS services, so free_credit_amount_usd is set to $100 per the rule credit_amount/3 only when computing monthly value, while the raw credit signal is the stated $100.
What's included in the free tier
- 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
- DB instance hours
- per hour
- Storage
- per GB-month
- Backup storage
- per GB-month
- Data transfer
- per usage
- No long-term commitments
- Pay per second
- Suitable for short-term or unpredictable workloads
- Can start and stop databases for development/testing
Amazon RDS Reserved Instances
- DB instance reservation term
- 1 year or 3 years
- Payment options
- No Upfront / Partial Upfront / All Upfront
- Significant discount vs On-Demand
- 1-year or 3-year term
- No Upfront, Partial Upfront, or All Upfront options
- Best for steady-state workloads
Pricing extracted from Amazon RDS's pricing page. Always verify current pricing before committing.