Amazon RDS vs Azure Database for PostgreSQL comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft are both solutions in the Database as a Service (DBaaS) category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.3, while Microsoft is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.7. Additionally, 98% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

Amazon RDS

Read 54 Amazon RDS reviews

5,264 Views
4,374 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

Azure Database for PostgreSQL

Read 9 Azure Database for PostgreSQL reviews

242 Views
45 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Amazon RDS

Azure Database for PostgreSQL

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 30, 2025

Amazon RDS and Azure Database for PostgreSQL are key players in managed PostgreSQL database services, each offering unique strengths. Amazon RDS leads with its extensive scalability and robust cloud integration, whereas Azure PostgreSQL stands out for its secure networking and seamless Azure services integration, tailored for AI and data applications.

Features: Amazon RDS enhances user operations through its managed database service by automating backups, monitoring, and patches. It supports various databases like MySQL and Oracle, and offers size adjustments seamlessly. Azure PostgreSQL excels in networking capabilities, making upgrades and observability tools straightforward, and integrates well into cloud-centric environments.

Room for Improvement: Amazon RDS needs to address feature accessibility, particularly the absence of shell access for troubleshooting and administrative tasks. Azure PostgreSQL could improve performance reliability during peak loads and refine cost management for comprehensive metric access. Both services have room for enhancing specific features to better serve their user bases.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Amazon RDS offers versatile deployment across public and hybrid clouds but requires detail-oriented cost provisioning. Its customer service varies by tier, with community resources often stepping in. Azure PostgreSQL facilitates flexible deployment with Azure service integration and rapid support although its initial response time could improve for enhanced user satisfaction.

Pricing and ROI: Amazon RDS offers a scalable, pay-as-you-go model but careful cost management is vital to avoid unexpected fees, despite reduced DBA resource needs. Azure PostgreSQL’s pay-as-you-go model is noted for affordability, delivering cost savings versus on-premises solutions, aided by Infrastructure as Code and FinOps for resource scaling and cost control.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon RDS vs. Azure Database for PostgreSQL Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon RDS vs. Azure Database for PostgreSQL

April 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Amazon RDS

Ranking in Database as a Service (DBaaS)

2nd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Azure Database for PostgreSQL

Ranking in Database as a Service (DBaaS)

8th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Open Source Databases (10th)

Featured Reviews

Samuel Ebite

AICE Graduate at alx_africa

Ensure high availability with robust encryption and seamless backups

Amazon RDS provides data encryption using services like KMS, crucial for securing high-sensitive data and meeting compliance requirements such as HIPAA or PCI DSS. The best practices we've employed with RDS help design a well-architected framework, encompassing security, encryption, scalability with multi-availability zone deployment, and operational excellence with automated backups. RDS features, such as reserved instances, storage auto-scaling, monitoring with technologies like CloudWatch, and proxies, contribute to cost optimization. The solution enhances security with IAM authentication and offers high availability to end users.

Read full review

Daniel Amini

Head of cloud, data, and AI at BJSS

An incredibly powerful industry leader that enabled us to build critical pieces of national infrastructure

Azure Database is simple and easy to use. We followed the prescribed training and upskilled 10 engineers. They think it's straightforward. They've already got PostgreSQL skills to optimize the solution, so they know what to do. It was easy to get started quickly and become effective. My team speaks highly of the platform's observability and monitoring features. It's as efficient as an enterprise needs it to be and. has all of the tooling and telemetry necessary to run an enterprise database. We take security seriously. The team has looked at the security features, and nothing has been flagged to us. My takeaway as a CTO is that they're comfortable with the security posture, the features, the observability, alerts, and now it integrates into the rest of the Azure landscape. The OpenAI integration and extensions have massively simplified integrating AI into a database. PostgreSQL's native vector capabilities are also incredibly powerful.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"It handles large-scale data migrations perfectly. Amazon RDS's performance is quite good. Charges are incurred after you utilize the service"

"The provisioning is much faster. You don't have to prepare hardware or install software. You just need to create an instance and you have a database."

"The product is very, very easy to use."

"I use Amazon RDS to store and manage data securely. It helps me retrieve information and gain insights from the data that comes in for my business or specific applications."

"The most valuable aspect of Amazon RDS is it is on the cloud."

"It is stable, scalable, and easy to deploy."

"Amazon RDS fulfills PCI requirements, which is a valuable feature for us."

"The product's most valuable features are option groups, S3 integration, automated and scheduled snapshots, and cross-region replication."

More Amazon RDS pros

"We use PostgreSQL to speed up application development. Our applications are ready sooner because we don't need to depend on other database teams."

"Backups are easy, resizing is quick, and the query analyzers help me find out what's happening in each of the queries."

"PostgresSQL is acknowledged as an incredibly powerful industry leader. We've built critical pieces of national infrastructure in the UK that rely on Postgres. A version of Postgres on Azure that's easy to adopt enables us to innovate. The addition of AI extensions is even more exciting. It's a significant opportunity for us."

"Our organization's database uptime has improved after implementing Azure Database for PostgreSQL, particularly with the flexible server's redundant configuration capabilities, which allow for failovers and read-only configurations."

"Overall, we are satisfied with Microsoft solutions and recommend them."

"In terms of integration, we already have SharePoint online, and we're starting to explore PowerApps and PowerFlow. It's all seamless. The ease of integrating SQL and licensing purposes plays a significant role, making it a comfortable choice for the organization."

"Postgres has helped us innovate and stay competitive."

"Backups are easy, resizing is quick, and the query analyzers help me find out what's happening in each of the queries."

Cons

"I would like to see improvements in the tool's automatic restart."

"The security features could be improved."

"There are a few aspects of database management that have room for improvement. There are a few parameters in the solution that are a bit unclear at our end as it's not understandable."

"When you are using it for the first time, it is a little bit hard to configure. The first-time configuration is not very easy. It should be easier to configure. Its installation should also be simpler. Currently, its installation is very complex. With SQL Server, we have access to the SQL Server analysis services and reporting services, but such services are not available with Amazon RDS."

"Currently, speaking of Microsoft SQL on RDS, you don't have a full option to be able to use it directly on RDS. So, it needs improvement."

"The product's high price is an area of concern where improvements are required."

"With my limited experience, I have noticed that documentation management could be improved. It could be better."

"The only thing that needs improvement would be the pricing of the solution."

More Amazon RDS cons

"They can offer more RAG extensions. Currently, it only has the vector search."

"Support can certainly get better."

"Support at best is a five out of ten."

"The critical service is the Azure OpenAI service. It would help to make it simpler and easier to integrate with that or cognitive services."

"While the flexibility of the server for financial reasons is understandable, better switching between primary and backup would make transitions smoother."

"Perhaps a minor improvement could be made in simplifying user additions, allowing for an easier process rather than scripting it out. However, scripting is not a significant issue."

"Performance is one area that has constraints for our customers. I believe there could be improvements in the mirroring part and Change Data Capture (CDC)."

"The critical service is the Azure OpenAI service. It would help to make it simpler and easier to integrate with that or cognitive services."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"AWS is becoming pretty expensive because cheap or absolutely free services have become paid services. Amazon RDS is not an expensive product, but Amazon's ecosystem is becoming increasingly expensive."

"The solution is expensive."

"The solution’s pricing could be cheaper."

"The price of Amazon RDS is reasonable."

"The prices for different regions are different."

"Licensing fees are paid on an annual basis."

"The substantial initial credit and cost-effectiveness make Amazon an attractive option."

"The platform pricing is on the higher side, but given its capabilities and ease of use, it remains competitive."

More Amazon RDS pricing and cost advice

"The pay-as-you-go pricing model plays a critical role in managing database-related costs and resource allocation. We build using Infrastructure as Code (IAC) and maintain a focus on FinOps to control Azure service costs. Some clients are pushy on price. It's critical to automate it, so we're just using it when appropriate and switching it off in certain scenarios."

"The pricing experience is positive. Azure Database for PostgreSQL reduces the need for hardware investments, and the pay-as-you-go pricing model positively affects database-related costs by allowing us to start small and scale as needed."

"There aren't any notable areas for improvement that I could see. PostgreSQL was self-sufficient with no need for additional database knowledge to maintain it."

"We do not pay for a full-year subscription because our usage is still at the beginning phase and not much. The pay-as-you-go model works well for us."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

14%

University

Manufacturing Company

22%

Financial Services Firm

16%

Marketing Services Firm

14%

Educational Organization

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon RDS?

The product's installation phase is easy.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon RDS?

The pricing for Amazon RDS is reasonable.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Amazon RDS?

One key improvement would be adding support for multi-storage paradigms, including columnar support, as seen in TiDB. The serverless support with Aurora could also be enhanced. Additionally, having...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Database for PostgreSQL?

Pricing is affordable for us. PostgreSQL is good and affordable for our needs.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Azure Database for PostgreSQL?

While the flexibility of the server for financial reasons is understandable, better switching between primary and backup would make transitions smoother. I noticed an issue where the primary refuse...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Azure Database for PostgreSQL?

We started using Azure Database for PostgreSQL ( /products/azure-database-for-postgresql-reviews ) about five to six years ago. Initially, we were doing an on-premises Kubernetes ( /products/kubern...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 28% of the time

Google Cloud SQL vs Amazon RDS

Compared 22% of the time

Oracle Database as a Service vs Amazon RDS

Compared 17% of the time

Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs Amazon RDS

Compared 16% of the time

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Oracle Database as a Service vs Azure Database for PostgreSQL

Compared 57% of the time

More Azure Database for PostgreSQL Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon RDS

April 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Azure Database for PostgreSQL

April 2025

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Also Known As

RDS

No data available

Overview

Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) is a web service that makes it easier to set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud. It provides cost-efficient, resizeable capacity for an industry-standard relational database and manages common database administration tasks.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Azure Database for PostgreSQL is a robust cloud solution designed to host scalable applications, manage large datasets, enable advanced analytics, and ensure data integrity through strong security features and automated backups.

Many utilize Azure Database for PostgreSQL due to its seamless integration with other Azure services and ease of setup. It supports advanced analytics and data warehousing with powerful querying capabilities. Users appreciate its high availability, automated backups, and strong security measures like advanced threat protection and encryption. Azure Database for PostgreSQL's compatibility with standard PostgreSQL ensures a smooth migration process and minimal disruption to existing applications. However, some areas needing improvement include scalability, performance under heavy loads, monitoring tools, integration with other services, documentation, support response times, and stability during peak times. Pricing is also considered high by smaller businesses.

What are the most important features of Azure Database for PostgreSQL?

High Availability: Built-in redundancy and failover capabilities to ensure continuous operation.
Automated Backups: Regular, automated backups for data protection and recovery.
Scalability Options: Flexible scaling to handle varying workloads efficiently.
Advanced Security: Features like threat protection and encryption to safeguard data.
Integration with Azure Services: Seamless interoperability with other Azure tools and services.
Performance Metrics: Robust monitoring tools for performance tracking and optimization.
Simplified Management: Easy management through the Azure portal.
PostgreSQL Compatibility: Ensures smooth migration and minimal disruption to existing applications.

What benefits and ROI should users look for?

Enhanced Security: Protects sensitive data through comprehensive security features.
Cost Efficiency: Potential for reduced infrastructure and maintenance costs.
Improved Performance: Optimized querying and data processing capabilities.
Simplified Operations: Streamlined database management and maintenance.
Scalability: Ability to scale resources based on workload demand.
Reliability: High availability and failover support to ensure operational continuity.

In healthcare, Azure Database for PostgreSQL is often implemented to manage and analyze large patient datasets while ensuring data security and compliance with regulations. E-commerce companies utilize it to handle scalable transactions and customer data management, leveraging its integration with data analytics tools. Financial institutions employ it to securely store and process large volumes of financial data, relying on its robust security and automated backups.

Microsoft

Sample Customers

Edmodo

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Amazon RDS vs. Azure Database for PostgreSQL

April 2025

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