# Amazon RDS Pricing (AWS) — On-Demand & Reserved

> On-demand and reserved monthly pricing for every Amazon RDS (AWS) instance, across PostgreSQL, MySQL, and MariaDB, in every region.

Source: https://www.bytebase.com/dbcost/rds-pricing/

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## How Amazon RDS pricing works

Amazon RDS bills each database instance by the hour under two models. On-demand is pay-as-you-go with no commitment, shown as a monthly figure (hourly rate x 730). Reserved instances commit you to an instance type for one or three years in exchange for a lower rate; the effective monthly cost is the cheapest all-upfront term amortized over the lease.

The instance price covers compute only. Storage (gp3, io1, io2), provisioned IOPS, automated backups beyond the free allowance, and data transfer are billed separately and vary by region. Rates also differ by engine (PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB) and by AWS region.

Newer families cost less per unit of performance, and AWS Graviton (ARM) instances - the t4g, m*g, and r*g families - are generally cheaper than their x86 equivalents. The interactive table at https://www.bytebase.com/dbcost/rds-pricing lets you filter by category, architecture, and generation, switch region and engine, and sort by on-demand or reserved price.

## Amazon RDS pricing FAQ

### How much does Amazon RDS cost?

On-demand Amazon RDS starts around $12/month for a burstable db.t4g.micro instance and scales to tens of thousands per month for the largest memory-optimized instances (PostgreSQL, us-east-1). Reserved instances lower the effective rate for a 1- or 3-year commitment.

### What is the difference between on-demand and reserved RDS pricing?

On-demand has no commitment and is billed per hour, best for variable or short-lived workloads. Reserved instances commit you to an instance type for 1 or 3 years and cut the effective monthly cost substantially.

### Does the price include storage and backups?

No. The price is for the database instance (compute) only. Storage, provisioned IOPS, backups beyond the free allowance, and data transfer are billed separately by AWS.

### What is the cheapest Amazon RDS instance?

The burstable db.t4g.micro is the cheapest current-generation option (about $12/month on-demand in us-east-1). Graviton (ARM) families are generally cheaper than their x86 equivalents.

### Is Amazon RDS pricing the same in every region?

No. Rates vary by AWS region; us-east-1 (N. Virginia) is usually among the cheapest.

### Does Amazon RDS have a free tier?

AWS offers a 12-month Free Tier for new accounts - 750 hours/month of a db.t2.micro, db.t3.micro, or db.t4g.micro plus storage. Standard on-demand and reserved rates apply after that.

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