When should I choose Aurora Serverless v2 over provisioned?

Serverless v2 is cost-effective for workloads with variable demand, dev/test environments, or applications with idle periods. It scales in 0.5 ACU increments in seconds, so you pay only for the compute you use. Provisioned instances are better for steady, predictable workloads where you can right-size the instance and potentially use Reserved Instances for up to 72% savings. If your database consistently uses more than 80% of a provisioned instance's capacity, provisioned will likely be cheaper.

How is Aurora storage and I/O billed?

Aurora storage is billed per GB-month and automatically grows as your data increases (up to 128 TiB). You do not pre-provision storage. I/O charges depend on your configuration: Aurora I/O-Optimized eliminates I/O charges in exchange for a higher compute and storage price (good for I/O-intensive workloads), while Aurora Standard charges per million I/O requests. Analyze your I/O patterns — workloads exceeding roughly 25% I/O cost relative to compute typically benefit from I/O-Optimized.

Aurora Cost Estimator

StorageAWS

Estimate Aurora MySQL/PostgreSQL costs with Serverless v2 and provisioned pricing.

Aurora Configuration

Deployment Mode

Serverless v2: $0.12/ACU-hour, estimated at 4 ACUs average usage.

Storage (GB)

I/O Operations per Month

$0.20 per million I/O operations.

Multi-AZ Deployment (doubles compute cost)

Raw Output

Output will appear here...

About This Tool

Amazon Aurora is a MySQL and PostgreSQL-compatible relational database engine that offers up to five times the throughput of standard MySQL and three times the throughput of standard PostgreSQL. Aurora comes in two capacity modes: provisioned (you choose instance sizes) and Serverless v2 (Aurora scales compute automatically between a minimum and maximum ACU range). Costs include compute instances or ACUs, storage (billed per GB-month with automatic scaling), I/O operations, backup retention beyond one day, and optional features like Global Database and cross-region replicas. This estimator helps you model total Aurora costs for both capacity modes.

When to Use This Tool

•Comparing provisioned Aurora with Serverless v2 for workloads with variable or unpredictable traffic patterns
•Estimating costs for Aurora Global Database deployments spanning multiple regions for disaster recovery
•Calculating the total cost of Aurora read replicas for read-heavy workloads with specific IOPS patterns

Frequently Asked Questions

When should I choose Aurora Serverless v2 over provisioned?: Serverless v2 is cost-effective for workloads with variable demand, dev/test environments, or applications with idle periods. It scales in 0.5 ACU increments in seconds, so you pay only for the compute you use. Provisioned instances are better for steady, predictable workloads where you can right-size the instance and potentially use Reserved Instances for up to 72% savings. If your database consistently uses more than 80% of a provisioned instance's capacity, provisioned will likely be cheaper.
How is Aurora storage and I/O billed?: Aurora storage is billed per GB-month and automatically grows as your data increases (up to 128 TiB). You do not pre-provision storage. I/O charges depend on your configuration: Aurora I/O-Optimized eliminates I/O charges in exchange for a higher compute and storage price (good for I/O-intensive workloads), while Aurora Standard charges per million I/O requests. Analyze your I/O patterns — workloads exceeding roughly 25% I/O cost relative to compute typically benefit from I/O-Optimized.

Related Learning Guides

DynamoDB Data Modeling28 min read

Disclaimer: This tool runs entirely in your browser. No data is sent to our servers. Always verify outputs before using them in production. AWS, Azure, and GCP are trademarks of their respective owners.