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 8.3, while Microsoft is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.7. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 24.7% mindshare in DS, compared to Microsoft’s 15.9% 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 54 Amazon RDS reviews

4,861 Views
4,099 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Read 117 Microsoft Azure SQL Database reviews

5,959 Views
2,686 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Amazon RDS

Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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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: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon RDS vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database

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

Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Ranking in Database as a Service (DBaaS)

1st

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

117

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Database as a Service (DBaaS) category, the mindshare of Amazon RDS is 24.7%, down from 27.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure SQL Database is 15.9%, down from 18.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Database as a Service (DBaaS)

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

Charley Hanania

Data Platform Specialist at QS2 AG - Quality Software Solutions

It is very easy to implement, manage, and offers great insights into what is happening inside the engine

Microsoft Azure SQL Database is integrated into other Azure capabilities and has a great foundation being on SQL Server with a long history of security, performance, and usability from a DBA perspective. Once you've set up a server, adding databases is easy. There's a minor challenge with having data in separate databases that you want to connect like we do on premises. I'm looking forward to using some of these new AI-driven functions that have come out around vectorization. Having the data closer to my transactional databases or data makes it easy to augment and enhance the Database and applications I currently use. It's great that Azure SQL now seamlessly integrates with Microsoft Fabric. It's a first-tier service in the cloud that connects to web applications and other databases. The data transformation orchestration capabilities within Database Factory and similar capabilities make it effortless to move that stuff forward.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Amazon RDS is quite a well-managed and stable service...The initial setup was very easy."

"I use Amazon RDS to support scalability, with multi-AZ support being an essential aspect."

"Being able to change the size of an RDS MySQL instance is amazing."

"It is easy to use, flexible, and powerful."

"I recommend RDS because it makes your life super easy."

"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."

"Relational databases excel in extensive normalization, eliminating data redundancy and efficiently structuring tables which leads to a clear and efficient relationship between tables using primary keys."

"The Amazon RDS features I found most valuable are snapshots and automatic backups."

More Amazon RDS pros

"Azure SQL is easy to integrate and simplifies things from a licensing perspective. We're comfortable with SQL versus other types of databases, so we feel better talking to Microsoft."

"The most valuable features of SQL Azure are its reliability and quick scalability."

"Because the solution is cloud-based it's highly manageable, it makes maintenance of logs, space, storage and backups much easier compared to a traditional SQL server installation."

"Its cost benefit is most valuable because you are charged per data unit instead of licensing. You can easily migrate your on-premise SQL to the cloud with a managed instance. That's what it is designed to do. It is easy to take your on-premise or older SQL instance and move it to the cloud. It makes it easy to get off your on-premise SQL and start utilizing the cost benefit of the cloud."

"It's the type of product that doesn't need much technical support assistance as it works seamlessly."

"It is quick to set up and easy to scale."

"This solution provides more comfort to the end-user compared to a normal SQL server."

"The tool set is familiar since I've used SQL Server on-premises for quite a few years."

More Microsoft Azure SQL Database pros

Cons

"The technical support from Amazon could improve. I would rate them a six out of ten as they do not fully meet my expectations."

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

"Amazon cannot guarantee the stability of some extensions, and there is a need for different extensions to meet PCI requirements."

"If Amazon RDS can be provided as a service platform, it would be beneficial for years. Instead of focusing on infrastructure, they can assist backend engineers and those with varying technical expertise in utilizing it effectively. It would be helpful if Amazon could provide a more predictable pricing strategy."

"I feel Amazon RDS should have a lot of functionalities to make monitoring within the database easier."

"Currently, we are using Fargate. Instead of that, we are planning to use EC2 instances, but we are facing some problems, and we are unable to enable NAT gateway for Elastic Load Balancer. When we enable auto-scaling, the instance count increases, and we get IP addresses dynamically. We need to whitelist the IPs of these instances, but there is no option to whitelist those IPs in Amazon RDS. We need one static IP that we can assign to ELB so that we can whitelist this IP."

"I like using Amazon RDS because it offers quick operations for me. However, there are times when understanding how to use some of the services can be challenging, even with documentation. If I could add a feature, I'd improve navigation for related services."

"You can only get access from the sales support. That means if you want to buy something or renew your subscription or upgrade, all these services are easily available. Yet, if you would like to get some technical support, you have to pay for it. You have to pay for an additional subscription."

More Amazon RDS cons

"The solution could be less expensive. They need to work on their pricing model."

"There are certain shortcomings when it comes to the stability of the product, especially if I consider the fact that there can always be some bug-related issues in the tool."

"The solution’s visibility could be improved."

"The default 1433 port for communication should be customizable because most hacks or attacks are attempted when creating any application or database on the default port."

"If we need to deploy data management or services with SQL Azure we need InterSecure."

"It should have better profiling capabilities."

"Certain features available commercially may not be applicable in our gov cloud."

"There is probably more functionality in our on-prem SQL Server than SQL Azure."

More Microsoft Azure SQL Database cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive."

"Amazon RDS is cheaper compared to other tools."

"The solution is fairly priced."

"Amazon RDS could improve by reducing the price."

"It is less expensive than SQL Server. We pay based on the usage on a monthly basis."

"if you don't know how to optimize and use your tool properly, the cost might hurt you."

"I would rate the tool's pricing an eight out of ten."

"Amazon RDS is not a very expensive solution."

More Amazon RDS pricing and cost advice

"We pay less than $1000 monthly in licensing fees. There are no additional costs."

"I would like it to be cheaper, but comparatively, it is reasonably priced."

"I believe the licensing is more on a global scale."

"I find that they are relatively expensive, especially when compared to AWS, where the prices are notably lower."

"From a licensing benefit standpoint, we have clients who are coming with their own SQL licensing with Software Assurance, and they are able to use those licenses for their Azure SQL and reduce costs."

"It is expensive. Snowflake and PostgreSQL are cheaper than this. Google is also cheaper than Azure. Its licensing is on a pay-as-you-go basis. It is based on usage and storage."

"SQL Azure's licensing cost is expensive."

"The license is based on the number of users."

More Microsoft Azure SQL Database pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

15%

University

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

71%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Healthcare Company

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 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?

The pricing of Microsoft Azure SQL Database is not cheap, affecting user uptake. A gradual reduction in price could improve accessibility and user numbers, making it easier for users to adopt the s...

See all answers

What needs improvement with SQL Azure?

Pricing could be improved to make Microsoft Azure SQL Database ( /products/microsoft-azure-sql-database-reviews ) more accessible. A reduction in price might encourage more users and bring more pro...

See all answers

Comparisons

MongoDB Atlas vs Amazon RDS

Compared 27% of the time

Google Cloud SQL vs Amazon RDS

Compared 21% of the time

Oracle Database as a Service vs Amazon RDS

Compared 18% of the time

Google Cloud Spanner vs Amazon RDS

Compared 5% of the time

Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer vs Amazon RDS

Compared 5% of the time

More Amazon RDS Competitors

Google Cloud SQL vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 38% of the time

MongoDB Atlas vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 17% of the time

Oracle Database as a Service vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 8% of the time

vCloud Air vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 3% of the time

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 3% of the time

More Microsoft Azure SQL Database Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon RDS

May 2025

Download Amazon RDS product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure SQL Database

May 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

April 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: April 2025.

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