Aiven for PostgreSQL vs Amazon RDS
Aiven for PostgreSQL
aiven.io
Amazon RDS
aws.amazon.comSide by side
| Figure | Aiven for PostgreSQL | Amazon RDS |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $5/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 10 | 6 |
| Spec score · Relational Databases | 9.3 (#1) | 8.8 (#5) |
| Spec score · Databases And Backend | 9.3 (#1) | 8.8 (#5) |
| Compliance | Aiven lists ISO 27001-series, ISAE 3000 SOC 2 Type II, GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA and PCI DSS coverage. | AWS states that RDS participates in compliance programs including SOC, PCI, FedRAMP and HIPAA. |
| Documentation depth | The PostgreSQL documentation covers connections, querying, service and database management, scaling, maintenance, high availability, backups, monitoring, integrations and extensions. | AWS provides a user guide, engine-specific guides, getting-started material, API reference and release-history documentation. |
| Founded | 2016 | 2006 |
| Free-tier restrictions | The indefinite free tier has one node, 1 CPU, 1 GB RAM and 1 GB disk, with no VPC, static IP, integrations, connection pooling, support or SLA coverage. | The free tier supports MariaDB, MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQL Server Express on micro instances and excludes Multi-AZ, reserved instances, custom engines and some Aurora actions. |
| Headquarters | Helsinki, Finland | Seattle, Washington, United States |
| Monitoring integrations | PostgreSQL metrics can be sent to Datadog or Aiven Metrics and displayed with a prebuilt Grafana dashboard. | RDS integrates with Amazon CloudWatch, CloudWatch Logs, CloudTrail, Performance Insights, and Database Activity Streams for monitoring and audit. |
| Public API | Aiven provides a REST API with an OpenAPI specification usable through cURL, the CLI or a Postman collection. | The RDS API reference documents query operations, data types, common parameters and error codes for programmatic management. |
| Rating on Capterra | 4.7 out of 5 from 71 reviews. | 4.7 out of 5 from 220 reviews |
| Rating on G2 | 4.4 out of 5 from 78 reviews. | 4.5 out of 5 from 907 reviews |
| Rating on Gartner Peer Insights | 4.6 out of 5 from 38 reviews for Aiven for PostgreSQL. | 4.6 out of 5 from 386 ratings |
| Rating on GetApp | 4.7 out of 5 from 71 reviews. | 4.7 out of 5 from 217 reviews |
| Rating on TrustRadius | 8.9 out of 10 from 3 reviews for Aiven. | 8.2 out of 10 from 290 reviews and ratings |
| Security controls | Aiven states that services use dedicated VMs, encryption in transit and at rest, IP allowlists, SAML SSO, VPC peering, BYOC and AWS/Azure PrivateLink. | RDS supports VPC network isolation, security groups, IAM permissions, SSL/TLS in transit, and AWS KMS encryption at rest using AES-256. |
| What it does | Aiven for PostgreSQL is a fully managed hosted relational database service. | Amazon RDS is a managed relational database service that sets up, operates and scales databases in AWS while handling common administration. |
Plans
Aiven for PostgreSQL
- FreeFree
- FreeFree
- Developer$5 a month
- Developer$5 a month
- Hobbyist$12 a month
- Startup$75 a month
- Startup$75 a month
- Business$180 a month
- Business$180 a month
- Premium$270 a month
Amazon RDS
- AWS Free TierFree
- AWS Free Tier for RDSFree
- On-demandPrice not published
- On-Demand InstancesPrice not published
- Reserved InstancePrice not published
- Reserved InstancesPrice not published
In their own words
Aiven for PostgreSQL
Aiven for PostgreSQL is a managed, hosted relational database service built on open-source PostgreSQL. It automates setup, maintenance, patching, and scaling, and includes automatic failover and point-in-time recovery. The cloud service can run across providers including AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure. Aiven lists more than 50 PostgreSQL extensions, including PostGIS, pgvector, TimescaleDB, and pg_cron, and describes uses in vector search and AI applications. It can integrate with Aiven for Grafana and send metrics to external endpoints such as Datadog. The free tier has a single node, 1 CPU, 1 GB RAM, and 1 GB storage; it has no integrations or connection pooling and a max_connections limit of 20. That tier is excluded from the advertised 99.99% uptime SLA and receives no support services. The Free plan is free; Developer is $5 a month, Startup starts at $75 a month, and Business starts at $180 a month. Paid services include Basic support.
Amazon RDS
Amazon RDS has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.