Amazon Aurora vs. Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)

Amazon Aurora is a fully managed relational database service that combines the performance and availability of high-end commercial databases with the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of open-source databases. Compatible with MySQL and PostgreSQL, Aurora delivers up to five times the throughput of standard MySQL databases and up to three times that of standard PostgreSQL databases. It is designed for high availability, offering up to 99.99% availability within a single region and up to 99.999% across multiple regions.

Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) makes it easy to set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud. It provides cost-efficient and resizable capacity while managing time-consuming database administration tasks such as hardware provisioning, database setup, patching and backups. It frees you up to focus on your apps so you can give them the better performance, availability, security, and compatibility they need. Amazon RDS is available on 6 familiar database instances: Amazon Aurora, MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, Oracle Database and SQL Server engines.