Amazon RDS vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database 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 8.4, while Microsoft is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.5. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 14.8% mindshare in DS, compared to Microsoft’s 11.3% mindshare. Additionally, 98% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

Amazon RDS

Read 58 Amazon RDS reviews

3,594 Views
3,486 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Read 134 Microsoft Azure SQL Database reviews

3,559 Views
3,488 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Amazon RDS

Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 12, 2024

Amazon RDS and Microsoft Azure SQL Database are strong players in the cloud database market. Based on the comparisons, each product has distinct advantages that cater to different needs.

Features: Amazon RDS offers automated backups, ease of scalability, and high availability. Microsoft Azure SQL Database has advanced machine learning capabilities, integration with other Azure services, and built-in security features.

Room for Improvement: Amazon RDS could improve its support, reduce downtime during maintenance, and enhance its performance analytics. Microsoft Azure SQL Database needs better performance analytics, improved documentation for complex setups, and more intuitive user interfaces.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Amazon RDS is easier to deploy and integrates well with AWS services, but its customer service receives mixed reviews. Microsoft Azure SQL Database has a straightforward deployment process and an effective support team, especially for enterprises already using Azure.

Pricing and ROI: Amazon RDS offers competitive pricing with good ROI for small and medium businesses, but costs can increase with higher usage. Microsoft Azure SQL Database is more expensive but the added features and integration justify the cost, providing good ROI for enterprises needing comprehensive solutions.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon RDS vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon RDS vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database

December 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 879,899 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score

2.6

Organizations benefit financially from Amazon RDS's cost-effectiveness, agility, and scalability, despite varying results and AWS expense concerns.

Sentiment score

6.7

Organizations using Azure SQL Database report cost savings, enhanced efficiency, and reduced data center needs with pay-per-use models.

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the Amazon RDS report

It is ensuring we receive what we pay for through the blend of price, performance, and features.

Michael Hamlett

Senior Manager, Information Technology of Data Strategies at a hospitality company with 5,001-10,000 employees

If you're managing your own data center, you always have to overprovision your systems and pay for storage space you're not using.

Maanda Ambani

Senior AI Specialist at Nedbank

We've reduced costs by about 20 percent after two or three years.

reviewer2595777

Azure Cloud Engineer at a computer software company with 201-500 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Microsoft Azure SQL Database report

Customer Service

Sentiment score

6.8

Amazon RDS support varies by level and location; premium is efficient, but US standard support often lacks expertise.

Sentiment score

6.4

Microsoft Azure SQL Database's customer service is effective but varies; larger accounts receive better support than smaller users.

The documentation is quite good.

Kenan Çiftçi

Corporate Database Architect at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

The official AWS technical support for Amazon RDS is helpful, providing 24/7 assistance for all business support cases with tools such as the health dashboard and AWS trusted advisor.

Baqir Sajjad

AWS Architect at Virtual University

I would rate the support from AWS very high, maybe nine, but it also depends on what kind of support you have signed in your contract, whether the premium support or the standard support.

reviewer2592669

Director Software Engineer at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Amazon RDS report

Microsoft played a significant role, even from a training perspective, and provided resources that directed us toward the right deployment path.

Maanda Ambani

Senior AI Specialist at Nedbank

Once I reach the right people, the support is incredibly knowledgeable and thorough.

Tom Geairn

CTO at 2W Technologies, INC

Microsoft provides excellent service and is always available to support us.

reviewer2595303

Sr. Principal Database at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Microsoft Azure SQL Database report

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score

7.1

Amazon RDS is praised for its scalability and reliability, though some express minor concerns with large dataset management.

Sentiment score

6.2

Microsoft Azure SQL Database offers flexible scalability, easy workload management, seamless tier transitions, and supports user expansion with robust infrastructure.

Its automated scaling, both in storage and instances, is vital as it eliminates manual interventions.

Samuel Ebite

AICE Graduate at alx_africa

The installation of Amazon RDS is quite easy and quite scalable.

reviewer2592669

Director Software Engineer at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees

Despite being a strong feature, scalability could be improved due to the lack of full functionality in autoscaling.

reviewer2668191

VP engineering at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Amazon RDS report

Scaling the solution is incredibly simple and involves just clicking a button or dragging a slider.

Michael Hamlett

Senior Manager, Information Technology of Data Strategies at a hospitality company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Azure's scalability features like Elasticity are essential.

Kiran Chintala

Solutions Architect at ITCON SERVICES, LLC

Microsoft Azure SQL Database is cloud-based, so it's great for scaling workloads.

reviewer2595312

System Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Microsoft Azure SQL Database report

Stability Issues

Sentiment score

8.1

Amazon RDS is praised for reliability, performance, and uptime with minimal issues, especially with Multi-AZ enhancing stability.

Sentiment score

7.2

Microsoft Azure SQL Database is praised for reliability, excellent uptime, and improved performance, with minor latency issues reported.

Amazon RDS is very stable when deployed correctly across different zones with the right configurations.

Samuel Ebite

AICE Graduate at alx_africa

It is a stable product overall, with very few issues.

reviewer2668191

VP engineering at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Amazon RDS is quite stable, and the SLAs are sort of 99.98%.

reviewer2592669

Director Software Engineer at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Amazon RDS report

We can't tell the difference between running on-prem or Azure because we no longer have those latency issues.

Maanda Ambani

Senior AI Specialist at Nedbank

SQL never crashes or suddenly becomes unavailable.

Fredrick Weinshenk

Cloud Engineer at Med Tech Solutions

I would assess the reliability of Microsoft Azure SQL Database in terms of maintaining uptime and availability as being excellent with zero complaints.

Matthew Parker

Ai Team Lead at Phoenix Software

For more quotes and insights, download the Microsoft Azure SQL Database report

Room For Improvement

Amazon RDS users seek improvements in security, documentation, scalability, integration, and support, with enhanced customization and cost reduction.

Azure SQL Database needs enhanced security, scalability, clear pricing, better documentation, broader compatibility, and improved user interface and automation.

Simplifying migration for those transitioning from on-premises to cloud environments.

Samuel Ebite

AICE Graduate at alx_africa

Having native Change Data Capture (CDC) support would be beneficial, allowing for seamless integration with Kafka without relying on external technologies like Debezium.

reviewer2668191

VP engineering at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Enabling performance insights to view query formats where the bottlenecks occur, identifying the fixes, slow queries, and missing indexes.

Baqir Sajjad

AWS Architect at Virtual University

For more quotes and insights, download the Amazon RDS report

It would be helpful if CPU performance were not pinned to the amount of storage you're using, and we could scale different properties of the Azure SQL database independently.

reviewer2595777

Azure Cloud Engineer at a computer software company with 201-500 employees

As a customer, I believe something which has been established, stable, and rugged for a very long time also needs cost optimization.

Varun Agrawal

Assistant Vice President at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

I could not get an accurate quote on what my monthly costs would be based on my needs.

Michael Hamlett

Senior Manager, Information Technology of Data Strategies at a hospitality company with 5,001-10,000 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Microsoft Azure SQL Database report

Setup Cost

Amazon RDS pricing is usage-dependent and cost-effective, offering savings on admin costs but can be expensive compared to alternatives.

Microsoft Azure SQL Database offers flexible pricing but is perceived as moderately expensive, requiring careful budget considerations.

While Azure provides great services, long-term plans on AWS are 20% to 30% cheaper.

Karthikeyan Katkam

AWS Engineer at Neurolov.ai

I find the pricing of Amazon RDS fair, as AWS operates on a pay-for-what-you-use model.

Samuel Ebite

AICE Graduate at alx_africa

I rate the price for Amazon as eight on a scale from one to ten.

Kenan Çiftçi

Corporate Database Architect at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Amazon RDS report

Azure Hybrid Benefit reduced costs by facilitating an easy transition of on-premises databases to the cloud.

Charley Hanania

Data Platform Specialist at QS2 AG - Quality Software Solutions

Microsoft Azure SQL Database is not cheap.

Fabricio Noriega

Software Architect at Dynaxti

It greatly reduces the total cost of ownership through efficient licensing depending on the client, the cost savings, and hybrid benefits.

Fredrick Weinshenk

Cloud Engineer at Med Tech Solutions

For more quotes and insights, download the Microsoft Azure SQL Database report

Valuable Features

Amazon RDS provides scalability, security, and flexibility with multi-engine support and simplified operations for diverse applications.

Microsoft Azure SQL Database provides seamless scalability, dynamic resource management, high efficiency, and cost-effective integration with Microsoft applications.

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.

Samuel Ebite

AICE Graduate at alx_africa

Database management is effective in Amazon RDS because it offers automated backups, high availability, read replicas, and support from multiple database engineers, while also providing security, monitoring and metrics, scalability.

Baqir Sajjad

AWS Architect at Virtual University

In some cases, we are using the read replica feature, and it does improve our application performance because we do not allow any downstream system to come to the main storage or main databases and perform a query.

reviewer2592669

Director Software Engineer at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Amazon RDS report

The simplicity in usability, along with improved organizational productivity where we no longer need to maintain on-premises SQL servers, is invaluable.

reviewer2596431

Software Engineer at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees

The Software as a Service model is more effective and easier to access in terms of security, as Azure provides security at the security layer, reducing the risk of breach.

Fatai Akinwande

Specialist Datacenter and Server at IHS Towers

Using Microsoft Azure SQL Database is very easy; it's much easier than SQL on-premise because I don't have to worry about deploying infrastructure, and I can rapidly deploy via infrastructure as code.

Thomas Sawyer

Executive Director, Platform Architecture at Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation – SMBC Group

For more quotes and insights, download the Microsoft Azure SQL Database report

Categories and Ranking

Amazon RDS

Ranking in Database as a Service (DBaaS)

2nd

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Relational Databases Tools (9th)

Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Ranking in Database as a Service (DBaaS)

1st

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

134

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Database as a Service (DBaaS) category, the mindshare of Amazon RDS is 14.8%, down from 25.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure SQL Database is 11.3%, down from 16.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Database as a Service (DBaaS) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Microsoft Azure SQL Database	11.3%
Amazon RDS	14.8%
Other	73.9%

Database as a Service (DBaaS)

Featured Reviews

reviewer2592669

Director Software Engineer at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees

Positive experiences with database services, with minor room for feature enhancements observed

I don't really see any disadvantages of Amazon RDS. With Oracle, I think AWS doesn't provide the RAC stability. If you have Oracle installed in your own data centers, you can set up various clusters and we can set up the RACs, but in Amazon RDS, we cannot have the RAC feature of Oracle. They could add that feature. Amazon RDS has limitations regarding RAC. If we talk about installing Oracle in RDS, we cannot have the RAC, but if you deploy Oracle on GCP, then there is probably the RAC feature available. I observed that around two or three years back, but I'm not sure whether they have added the RAC feature in AWS. Amazon RDS is expensive compared to GCP. GCP also has the same features, and although it is quite extensive and feature-rich, I see Amazon RDS as slightly expensive compared to other clouds.

Read full review

Thomas Sawyer

Executive Director, Platform Architecture at Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation – SMBC Group

Automatic tuning and multi-region availability have reduced manual workloads and improved performance management

The features of Microsoft Azure SQL Database that I like the most are easy scaling and high availability. I appreciate those features because it's easy to make Microsoft Azure SQL Database readily available in a multi-region infrastructure. Using Microsoft Azure SQL Database is very easy; it's much easier than SQL on-premise because I don't have to worry about deploying infrastructure, and I can rapidly deploy via infrastructure as code. I am using the automatic tuning feature in Microsoft Azure SQL Database. We are using the new feature of data encryption in Microsoft Azure SQL Database with customer-managed keys only. The reliability and stability of Microsoft Azure SQL Database platform are rock-solid; it's as good, if not better, than what our on-premise stability has been from an uptime perspective.

Read full review

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Database as a Service (DBaaS) solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

879,899 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

11%

University

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	22
Midsize Enterprise	15
Large Enterprise	23

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	59
Midsize Enterprise	17
Large Enterprise	61

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?

Currently, I cannot think of any major improvements. Perhaps more platforms in terms of database engine versions would be beneficial. Right now, Amazon RDS supports MySQL and PostgreSQL, but there ...

See all answers

What do you like most about SQL Azure?

The automated scalability feature of SQL Azure has proven to be highly beneficial, particularly when deployed in the cloud.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SQL Azure?

I would say I am at a basic experience level with the pricing, setup costs and licensing because while I am the administrator for the service, I do not provision the services and worry about the co...

See all answers

What needs improvement with SQL Azure?

I have no comments at the moment on how Microsoft Azure SQL Database can be improved. I have no comments on additional features that I would like to see released in the next release. I do not have ...

See all answers

Comparisons

MongoDB Atlas vs Amazon RDS

Compared 20% of the time

Google Cloud SQL vs Amazon RDS

Compared 15% of the time

Oracle Database as a Service vs Amazon RDS

Compared 12% of the time

Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer vs Amazon RDS

Compared 5% of the time

Google Cloud Spanner vs Amazon RDS

Compared 5% of the time

More Amazon RDS Competitors

Google Cloud SQL vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 21% of the time

MongoDB Atlas vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 13% of the time

Azure Database for PostgreSQL vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 9% of the time

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 6% of the time

Oracle Database as a Service vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 6% of the time

More Microsoft Azure SQL Database Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon RDS

January 2026

Download Amazon RDS product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure SQL Database

December 2025

Download Microsoft Azure SQL Database product report

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)

Microsoft Azure SQL Database is a relational database-as-a-service that delivers predictable performance, scalability, business continuity, data protection, and near-zero administration to cloud developers and solution architects. This is the deep technical library for Azure SQL Database.

Microsoft

Sample Customers

Edmodo

adnymics GmbH, LG CNS, Centrebet, netfabb GmbH, MedPlast, Accelera Solutions, Sochi Organizing Committee, realzeit GmbH

Buyer's Guide

Amazon RDS vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database

December 2025

Free Report: Amazon RDS vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon RDS vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

879,899 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Amazon RDS vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database report.

See our list of best Database as a Service (DBaaS) vendors.

We monitor all Database as a Service (DBaaS) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.