Amazon Aurora vs Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL
Amazon Aurora
aws.amazon.com
Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL
azure.microsoft.comSide by side
| Figure | Amazon Aurora | Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 4 | 10 |
| Spec score · Ai Databases | 8.1 (#11) | 8.1 (#12) |
| Spec score · Spatial Databases | 8.2 (#13) | 8.1 (#14) |
| Spec score · Databases And Backend | 8.1 (#14) | 8.0 (#18) |
| Spec score · Database Software | 8.1 (#41) | 8.1 (#42) |
| Spec score · Transaction Data Store Software | 8.1 (#17) | 7.9 (#22) |
| Availability | AWS says Aurora is designed for up to 99.99% single-Region and 99.999% multi-Region availability. | The product page states that NoSQL data has SLAs including less than 10 millisecond read and write latency and 99.999 percent availability. |
| Founded | 2006 | 1975 |
| Free plan | No | Yes |
| Headquarters | Seattle, Washington, United States | Redmond, Washington, United States |
| Integrations | Aurora MySQL can invoke AWS Lambda functions and load data from or save data to Amazon S3. | Change feed supports event-driven architectures and streaming pipelines using Azure Functions and Spark. |
| Intended workloads | AWS identifies enterprise applications, multi-tenant SaaS, and globally distributed applications as Aurora use cases. | Microsoft identifies flexible-schema, latency-sensitive, elastic, high-throughput, and highly available mission-critical apps as good fits, while describing analytical OLAP and highly relational apps as poor fits. |
| Scaling | Aurora Serverless automatically starts, stops, and scales capacity based on application needs, and charges for capacity consumed. | Throughput options include standard provisioned, autoscale provisioned, and serverless models. |
| Security | Aurora supports encryption at rest using AWS KMS keys and uses SSL (AES-256) to secure data in transit. | Microsoft recommends private endpoints, disabling public network access, and client-side encryption with Always Encrypted for sensitive data. |
Plans
Amazon Aurora
- Free planFree
- Paid planPrice not published
- Aurora PostgreSQL Serverless Free planFree
- Aurora PostgreSQL and Aurora MySQL On-DemandPrice not published
Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL
- Free tierFree
- 30-day free trialPriced on request
- Standard provisioned throughputPriced on request
- Standard provisioned throughputPrice not published
- Autoscale provisioned throughputPriced on request
- Autoscale provisioned throughputPrice not published
- ServerlessPriced on request
- ServerlessPrice not published
- Azure Cosmos DB free tierFree
- Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL — standard provisioned throughputPrice not published
In their own words
Amazon Aurora
Amazon Aurora has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.
Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL
Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL is a fully managed cloud database built around schema-agnostic JSON documents and SQL-like querying. It supports global data distribution, multi-region writes, and automatic failover, with configurable consistency controls and transactions. Search includes vector and hybrid similarity capabilities for workloads such as retrieval-augmented generation and AI agents. Throughput can use standard provisioned, autoscale provisioned, or serverless models. The service lists SDKs for.NET, Java, JavaScript/Node.js, Python, Go, and Rust. Its change feed can support event-driven architectures and streaming pipelines using Azure Functions and Spark; no-ETL analytical workflows are available through Azure Synapse Link or Fabric mirroring. Microsoft states that NoSQL data has service-level agreements including less than 10 millisecond read and write latency and 99.999 percent availability. A free tier includes 1,000 RU/s and 25 GB of storage for one account per Azure subscription, and a 30-day trial is listed. The Azure Cosmos DB emulator provides a no-cost local development environment for Windows or Linux. The pricing page notes that the selected compute pricing model and API cannot be changed after selection.