Amazon Aurora vs DigitalOcean Managed PostgreSQL

Amazon Aurora9.4Visit DigitalOcean Managed PostgreSQL9.0Visit

Higher score Amazon Aurora #1 in PostgreSQL Hosting 9.4/10 Paid ✓ 2 of 4 features Visit AWS Aurora

vs

DigitalOcean Managed PostgreSQL #5 in PostgreSQL Hosting 9.0/10 Paid ✓ 4 of 4 features Visit DigitalOcean

• Amazon Aurora fits best

  Scalable AWS PostgreSQL-compatible workloads

• DigitalOcean Managed PostgreSQL fits best

  Managed PostgreSQL with migration and scaling tools

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Side by side

Feature	Amazon Aurora 9.4/10 Visit ↗	DigitalOcean Managed PostgreSQL 9.0/10 Visit ↗
At a glance
Editor score	9.4	9.0
Ranking	#1 in PostgreSQL Hosting	#5 in PostgreSQL Hosting
Best for	Scalable AWS PostgreSQL-compatible workloads	Managed PostgreSQL with migration and scaling tools
Pricing model	Paid	Paid
Starting price	—	$15.15/mo
Free plan	—	—
Free trial	—	—
Deployment	Cloud	Cloud
Platforms	Web	Web
Support	Email, Live chat, Phone, Tickets, Community, Docs · 24/7	Tickets, Docs, Community
Compliance	SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI DSS	SOC 2, 2FA
Built for	Small business, Mid-market, Enterprise	Solo, Small business, Mid-market, Enterprise
Features Amazon Aurora 2/4 · DigitalOcean Managed PostgreSQL 4/4
High availability	✓	✓
Point-in-time recovery	Not checked yet	✓ (best)
Read replicas	✓	✓
Custom extensions	Not checked yet	✓ (best)
Specs
Maximum storage	Not checked yet	30 GB
Backup retention	Not checked yet	7 days
Our review
Pros	Provisioned and serverless deployment with automatic capacity scaling Up to 15 read replicas, automatic failover, and continuous backups Multi-Region operation with point-in-time recovery support	Seven-day point-in-time recovery with daily backups Automated failover, standby nodes, and read-only nodes Online migration and support for PostGIS, pgvector, and TimescaleDB
Cons	Paid service with pricing that varies by region and configuration Cloud-based deployment tied to the AWS ecosystem Not an open-source database product	No free plan High availability requires an additional standby node charge Monthly pricing increases substantially with compute and storage capacity
Our verdict	Amazon Aurora is a fully managed, cloud-based relational database service from Amazon Web Services. It supports PostgreSQL- and MySQL-compatible database engines, along with Aurora DSQL, and is designed for enterprise applications, SaaS… Read the review →	DigitalOcean Managed PostgreSQL is a cloud database service for developers, startups, and growing businesses that want PostgreSQL provisioning, maintenance, updates, backups, monitoring, and security handled by the provider. It supports… Read the review →

Strengths and trade-offs

• Amazon Aurora — where it wins

  • Provisioned and serverless deployment with automatic capacity scaling
  • Up to 15 read replicas, automatic failover, and continuous backups
  • Multi-Region operation with point-in-time recovery support

  Where it doesn't

  • Paid service with pricing that varies by region and configuration
  • Cloud-based deployment tied to the AWS ecosystem
  • Not an open-source database product

• DigitalOcean Managed PostgreSQL — where it wins

  • Seven-day point-in-time recovery with daily backups
  • Automated failover, standby nodes, and read-only nodes
  • Online migration and support for PostGIS, pgvector, and TimescaleDB

  Where it doesn't

  • No free plan
  • High availability requires an additional standby node charge
  • Monthly pricing increases substantially with compute and storage capacity

• Amazon Aurora9.4/10 · Paid

  A managed AWS database for scalable PostgreSQL-compatible and distributed SQL workloads.

  Visit AWS AuroraFull verdict →
• DigitalOcean Managed PostgreSQL9.0/10 · Paid

  A managed PostgreSQL service with migration, recovery, replicas, and scaling controls.

  Visit DigitalOceanFull verdict →