Comparison

Aureus vs Amazon RDS

Amazon RDS is a capable managed service. But it is built around multi-tenant shared infrastructure — the same hypervisor hosts dozens of customers. For teams where database performance is a product constraint, that tradeoff is often too expensive. Aureus runs your PostgreSQL on a dedicated physical server that no other customer touches.

Aureus

  • Dedicated physical hardware
  • NVMe local storage
  • Full PostgreSQL config access
  • Any extension, unrestricted
  • Flat predictable pricing
  • Named engineer support

Amazon RDS

  • Shared hypervisor (Nitro)
  • EBS network-attached storage
  • Parameter groups — restricted
  • Extension allowlist
  • Variable multi-part billing
  • Tier-based support, costly
Feature
Aureus
Amazon RDS
Infrastructure
Hardware isolation
Dedicated physical server
Shared multi-tenant hypervisor
CPU allocation
Dedicated vCPUs — never shared
vCPUs shared across tenants on same host
Memory
Up to 256 GB DDR5 ECC, dedicated
Up to 768 GB, shared hypervisor layer
Storage
NVMe local SSD — no network I/O overhead
EBS gp3/io2 — network-attached, latency variable
Performance
Noisy-neighbour risk
Zero — no shared hardware
Present — mitigated but not eliminated
Storage latency
< 0.1 ms local NVMe
0.5–2 ms EBS (typical)
Connections
PgBouncer included, tuned per workload
RDS Proxy add-on, extra cost
Security
Kernel-level isolation
Physical separation — no shared CPU cache
Hypervisor isolation (Nitro), shared silicon
Side-channel attack surface
Eliminated — no co-tenants on hardware
Spectre/Meltdown mitigations applied, risk remains
Network exposure
Private network by default, IP allowlist
VPC with security groups — correct, but complex
Operations
PostgreSQL versions
14, 15, 16 — your choice, coordinated upgrades
14, 15, 16 — AWS-managed upgrade schedule
Configuration access
Full postgresql.conf access on request
Parameter groups — many settings locked
Extensions
Any extension that compiles — unrestricted
Approved list only — many blocked
Superuser access
Available on request for migrations
Not available — rds_superuser restricted
Pricing
Pricing model
Flat monthly — predictable
Instance + storage + I/O + transfer — variable
Data transfer fees
None for internal traffic
Egress charged per GB
Backup storage
Included in plan
Free up to DB size, then per GB/month
Support
Incident response
Named engineer, direct escalation
AWS Support tier — Business minimum $100/mo
Access to your DB engineer
Yes — we know your schema
No — generic cloud support

When RDS is the right choice

We believe in honest comparisons. RDS is a good fit if you are already deep in AWS and want everything under one billing account, if your workload is development or staging with no production SLA, or if your database is not a performance bottleneck and cost is the primary driver.

Aureus is built for teams whose database is a first-class production concern — where latency, isolation, and predictability directly affect revenue or user experience.

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