Amazon DynamoDB vs Amazon ElastiCache
Amazon DynamoDB
aws.amazon.com
Amazon ElastiCache
aws.amazon.comSide by side
| Figure | Amazon DynamoDB | Amazon ElastiCache |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | $0.09/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| iOS | Yes | — |
| Android | Yes | — |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 4 | 6 |
| Spec score · NoSQL Databases | 9.0 (#5) | 9.4 (#1) |
| Company profile | Gartner lists Amazon Web Services as a public company founded in 2006, headquartered in Seattle, with more than 10,001 employees. | LinkedIn lists Amazon Web Services as a public IT services company headquartered in Seattle, with more than 10,001 employees and a 2006 founding year. |
| Compliance | AWS says DynamoDB security controls and compliance standards address requirements for governments, global banks, and other high-sensitivity organizations. | AWS lists ElastiCache as supporting SOC 1, SOC 2, SOC 3, ISO, MTCS, C5, PCI, HIPAA, and FedRAMP programs. |
| Private connectivity | DynamoDB supports VPC gateway and interface endpoints, including AWS PrivateLink connections from VPCs and on-premises systems. | AWS PrivateLink can expose ElastiCache API operations privately inside an Amazon VPC without an internet gateway, NAT, VPN, or Direct Connect. |
| Rating on G2 | 4.3 out of 5 from 499 reviews | 4.5 out of 5 from 88 reviews |
| Rating on Gartner Peer Insights | 4.6 out of 5 from 377 ratings | 4.0 out of 5 from 1 review |
| Rating on GetApp | 4.4 out of 5 from 21 reviews | 4.5 out of 5 from 2 reviews |
| Rating on TrustRadius | 7.9 out of 10 from 206 reviews and ratings | 8.9 out of 10 from 17 reviews |
| Scaling | DynamoDB has no servers to provision or patch and can automatically scale tables, including scaling to zero in on-demand mode. | ElastiCache Serverless monitors compute, memory, and network use and scales vertically and horizontally as demand changes. |
| Security | Customer data is encrypted in transit and at rest by default, and access can be controlled with IAM policies down to specific items and attributes. | ElastiCache supports encryption in transit and at rest, IAM authentication, Valkey or Redis OSS AUTH, and role-based access control. |
| What it does | Amazon DynamoDB is a serverless, fully managed distributed NoSQL database supporting key-value and document models with single-digit-millisecond performance. | Amazon ElastiCache is a managed cloud service for deploying, operating, and scaling distributed in-memory caches and data stores. |
Plans
Amazon DynamoDB
- Free tierFree
- On-demand capacityPrice not published
- Provisioned capacityPrice not published
- DynamoDB Free TierFree
Amazon ElastiCache
- AWS Free TierFree
- Backup storage$0.09 a month
- ElastiCache Serverless$6 a month
- ElastiCache Serverless$6 a month
- Database Savings PlansPrice not published
- On-demand nodesPrice not published
In their own words
Amazon DynamoDB
Amazon DynamoDB is a serverless, managed NoSQL database for applications that need single-digit millisecond performance at any scale, according to AWS. Users do not provision or patch database servers, and tables can scale automatically, including to zero in on-demand mode. Primary keys and global or local secondary indexes provide ways to query data. Global tables support multi-Region, multi-active operation; AWS says they are designed for up to 99.999% availability. The database also supports native vector search for similarity searches and agent memory use cases. Data is encrypted in transit and at rest by default, and IAM policies can restrict access to specific items and attributes. Point-in-time recovery provides continuous, per-second backups and restoration within a configured period of 1 to 35 days. A free tier is listed with 25 WCUs, 25 RCUs, and 25 GB of storage per Region and payer account, among other limits. On-demand capacity is billed per request consumed; provisioned capacity is billed for specified capacity even if usage is lower.
Amazon ElastiCache
Amazon ElastiCache is a managed caching service compatible with Valkey, Memcached, and Redis OSS, with performance described as microsecond latency. Customers can deploy a serverless cache or a node-based cluster. ElastiCache Serverless monitors compute, memory, and network use and scales vertically and horizontally as demand changes. It replicates data across multiple Availability Zones and offers a 99.99% availability SLA for each cache. Listed uses include application and semantic caching, data and session stores, and leaderboards. It can act as a front-end cache for Amazon RDS, Aurora, DocumentDB, and DynamoDB, and improve performance with EC2 and EMR. Security options include encryption in transit and at rest, IAM authentication, Valkey or Redis OSS AUTH, and role-based access control. CloudWatch provides more than 40 operational metrics at no additional charge. Valkey serverless pricing starts at $6 a month, billed according to stored data in GB-hours and requests measured in ECPUs. Data tiering is unavailable with ElastiCache Serverless.