With Serverless v2, the hourly cost is somewhere like 12-20 cents per ACU per hour, depending on the AWS Region. You can check the price for each combination of AWS Region and Aurora database engine here: https://aws.amazon.com/rds/aurora/pricing/ Let's consider us-east-1, which (as of January 2024) is 12 cents per ACU per hour. The minimum for Serverless v2 is 0.5 ACUs, so 6 cents / hour. A typical month has 720 hours (30 days) or 744 (31 days). So if you set minimum capacity to 0.5 ACUs, leave the cluster idle, and nothing unexpected happens, best case is roughly $43-45 per month for instance charges. Plus whatever usage-based charges for storage, I/O, and there are some other optional features that could result in charges. (That's why you would go through the exercise with the pricing calculator.) What could interfere with the best case? Turning on memory-consuming or CPU-consuming features could prevent the idle cluster from scaling down to 0.5 ACUs. Something like Performance Insights (minimum 2 ACUs) or global database (minimum 8 ACUs). Cleanup operations like PostgreSQL vacuum could run and cause scaling up when you think the database should be idle. What actions could you take to make the best case even better? Do "stop cluster" overnight or other long periods when you don't need to use the database. If you need to add reader instances to the cluster to test out multi-AZ usage (read/write splitting etc.), delete the reader instances when they're not needed. Have cron jobs to run stop-db-cluster, modify-db-cluster, etc. to put things into a cheaper state during overnight periods if you forget to do it at the end of the day. Answer from rePost-User-6113899 on repost.aws
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AWS
aws.amazon.com › amazon rds › amazon aurora › pricing
Amazon Aurora Pricing
5 days ago - During this time, AWS provides fixes for critical security issues and bugs through patch releases, giving you more time, up to three years, to upgrade to a new major version to help you meet your business requirements. For provisioned instances on Amazon Aurora, RDS Extended Support is priced per vCPU per hour. For Aurora serverless...
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With Serverless v2, the hourly cost is somewhere like 12-20 cents per ACU per hour, depending on the AWS Region. You can check the price for each combination of AWS Region and Aurora database engine here: https://aws.amazon.com/rds/aurora/pricing/ Let's consider us-east-1, which (as of January 2024) is 12 cents per ACU per hour. The minimum for Serverless v2 is 0.5 ACUs, so 6 cents / hour. A typical month has 720 hours (30 days) or 744 (31 days). So if you set minimum capacity to 0.5 ACUs, leave the cluster idle, and nothing unexpected happens, best case is roughly $43-45 per month for instance charges. Plus whatever usage-based charges for storage, I/O, and there are some other optional features that could result in charges. (That's why you would go through the exercise with the pricing calculator.) What could interfere with the best case? Turning on memory-consuming or CPU-consuming features could prevent the idle cluster from scaling down to 0.5 ACUs. Something like Performance Insights (minimum 2 ACUs) or global database (minimum 8 ACUs). Cleanup operations like PostgreSQL vacuum could run and cause scaling up when you think the database should be idle. What actions could you take to make the best case even better? Do "stop cluster" overnight or other long periods when you don't need to use the database. If you need to add reader instances to the cluster to test out multi-AZ usage (read/write splitting etc.), delete the reader instances when they're not needed. Have cron jobs to run stop-db-cluster, modify-db-cluster, etc. to put things into a cheaper state during overnight periods if you forget to do it at the end of the day.
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Your best bet is to use AWS Calculator # https://calculator.aws/#/ in order to estimate the operating cost with the services that you plan to use. Secondly using the Graviton2 instances would save a lot compared with other instances. I have listed some common instance types that you may start using and then change later based on your project workload. t4g : For dev/test workload m6g : For general purpose workload r6g : For memory optimized workload Go with small storage initially and then you can scale it based on the need to optimize the cost.
Discussions

Aurora Serverless v2 vs RDS cost comparison?
Had a similar scenario, coworkers migrated to aurora serverless v2 since 1 month and we don't see any real issue so far. Cost definitely improved but we are still looking to understand the ACU consumption which is a bit higher than what we expected More on reddit.com
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February 4, 2023
Cheapest serverless SQL database - Aurora?
Try this search for more information on this topic. Comments, questions or suggestions regarding this autoresponse? Please send them here . I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns. More on reddit.com
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November 5, 2023
Cost for an aurora cluster
Do check how aws charge for their services using this calculator https://calculator.aws/#/ For aurora, if you are not using aurora serverless, you are charged for $/hr minimally even without activity as explained in https://aws.amazon.com/rds/aurora/pricing/ As for how to check your bill, navigate to aws bills page explained in https://aws.amazon.com/aws-cost-management/aws-billing/ . To sum up, please get yourself trained up on how to operate in an AWS environment to prevent cases such as this. More on reddit.com
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March 12, 2024
Amazon Aurora Serverless v2 is Generally Available!
This still have a monthly cost or is it 100% serverless More on reddit.com
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April 21, 2022
People also ask

Scaled-out databases split across multiple servers

Customers with high write or read requirements often split databases across several instances to achieve higher throughput. However, customers often provision too many or too few instances, increasing cost or limiting scale. With Aurora serverless, customers split databases across several Aurora instances and let the service adjust capacity instantly and automatically based on need. It seamlessly adjusts capacity for each node with no downtime or disruption, and uses only the amount of capacity needed to support applications.

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aws.amazon.com
aws.amazon.com › amazon rds › amazon aurora › serverless
Serverless Database - Amazon Aurora Serverless - AWS
Variable workloads

You're running an infrequently-used application, with peaks of 30 minutes to several hours a few times each day or several times per year, such as a human resources, budgeting, or operational reporting application. You no longer have to provision to peak capacity, which would require you to pay for resources you don't continuously use, or to average capacity, which would risk performance problems and a poor user experience.

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aws.amazon.com
aws.amazon.com › amazon rds › amazon aurora › serverless
Serverless Database - Amazon Aurora Serverless - AWS
Unpredictable workloads

You're running workloads with database usage throughout the day, and also peaks of activity that are hard to predict. For example, a traffic site that might see a surge of activity when it starts raining. Your database will automatically scale capacity to meet the needs of the application's peak load and scale back down when the surge of activity is over.

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aws.amazon.com
aws.amazon.com › amazon rds › amazon aurora › serverless
Serverless Database - Amazon Aurora Serverless - AWS
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Dash0
dash0.com › home › knowledge base › aurora serverless v2: why you need it, new features and pricing
Aurora Serverless v2: Why You Need It, New Features and Pricing · Dash0
March 23, 2026 - The cost of Aurora Serverless v2 appears expensive, and while it is possible to save costs on your database for peak loads, it is not a cost-effective option for everyone. The price of Aurora capacity units (ACUs) in v2 ($0.12/hr) is twice that ...
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Bytebase
bytebase.com › blog › guides › aws aurora pricing explained: instance types, serverless, and cost optimization (2026)
AWS Aurora Pricing Explained: Instance Types, Serverless, and Cost Optimization (2026) | Bytebase
February 20, 2026 - A small Aurora deployment with a db.t3.medium instance starts at approximately $69/month for compute alone (on-demand), plus storage ($0.10/GB-month) and I/O charges. A typical mid-sized production setup costs $400-$900/month.
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Cloud Burn
cloudburn.io › tools › amazon-aurora-pricing-calculator
Aurora Pricing Calculator - Instances, Serverless & DSQL | Cloud Burn
Aurora pricing calculator for Instance-based, Serverless v2 & DSQL costs. Compare MySQL and PostgreSQL engines, I/O-Optimized storage, Reserved Instances, and Graviton pricing by region.
Find elsewhere
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Vantage
vantage.sh › blog › neon-vs-aws-aurora-serverless-postgres-cost-scale-to-zero
Amazon Aurora vs Neon: A Serverless Postgres Pricing Comparison | Vantage
Amazon states that this is a use case for Aurora Serverless but because of the inability to scale to zero, you will have a minimum monthly charge of $43.80 per instance ($0.12 x 0.5 ACUs x 730 hours in a month).
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AWS
aws.amazon.com › amazon rds › amazon aurora › serverless
Serverless Database - Amazon Aurora Serverless - AWS
5 days ago - With Amazon Aurora Serverless, there are no DB Instances to manage. The database automatically starts, stops, and scales capacity up or down based on your application's needs.
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/aws › aurora serverless v2 vs rds cost comparison?
r/aws on Reddit: Aurora Serverless v2 vs RDS cost comparison?
February 4, 2023 -

I have an app in production running on RDS postgresql db.r5.xlarge , the traffic is normal peaking during the day and almost sleeps during the night without any clear spikes.
I have a read replica that is used for reporting queries, this one is problematic, it has spikes whenever the users enter the google data studio reports, and even db.r5.2xlarge doesn't do the job fairly well.
I started thinking about evaluating Aurora Serverless v2 as an option, do you think using serverless will decrease the costs? what sorts of problems using serverless might cause or you have experience with?

Thanks everyone

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DoiT
doit.com › home › blog › comparing aurora distributed sql vs. aurora serverless v2: a practical cost analysis
Comparing Aurora Distributed SQL vs. Aurora Serverless v2: A Practical Cost Analysis
March 31, 2026 - The first takeaway is that the billing constructs differ between Aurora Serverless v2 and Aurora DSQL, so apart from storage, we can’t directly compare. You’ll note that storage is nearly 50% more expensive than even I/O Optimized, meaning that a large storage system with low transaction volumes is always going to cost more on DSQL even before we get into what exactly is a DPU? Read on for that! A DPU is Aurora DSQL’s compute billing metric.
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/aws › cheapest serverless sql database - aurora?
r/aws on Reddit: Cheapest serverless SQL database - Aurora?
November 5, 2023 -

For a hobby project, I'm looking at database options. For my use case (single user, a few MB of storage, traffic measured in <20 transactions a day), DynamoDB seems to be very cheap - pretty much always in free tier, or at the pennies-per-month range.

But I can't find a SQL option in a similar price range - I tried to configure an Aurora Serverless Postgres DB, and the cheapest I could make it was about $50 per month.

Is there any free- or near-free SQL database option for my use case?

I'm not trying to be a cheapskate, but I do enjoy how cheap serverless options can be for hobby projects.

(My current monthly AWS spend is about $5, except when Route 53 domains get renewed!).

Thanks.

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TigerData
tigerdata.com › blog › estimate-amazon-aurora-costs
Estimating Amazon Aurora Costs | Tiger Data
January 7, 2026 - As with knowing the system’s architecture, having an idea of data needs is also critical. Aurora supports on-demand and reserved instances just as normal RDS does. However, AWS offers Aurora Serverless, too, for spiky and unpredictable loads.
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Amazon Web Services
docs.aws.amazon.com › amazon rds › user guide for aurora › using aurora serverless › requirements and limitations for aurora serverless
Requirements and limitations for Aurora serverless - Amazon Aurora
June 19, 2026 - When you create a cluster where you intend to use Aurora serverless DB instances, pay attention to the following requirements and limitations. ... Feature availability and support varies across specific versions of each Aurora database engine, and across AWS Regions.
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Amazon Web Services
aws.amazon.com › savings plans › database
Database Savings Plan
2 weeks ago - This savings plans automatically apply to eligible serverless and provisioned instance usage regardless of engine, instance family, size, deployment option, or AWS Region with no upfront payment. For example, with Database Savings Plan, you can change between instance types such as Aurora db.r7g ...
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Codegive
codegive.com › blog › aurora_serverless_postgres_pricing.php
Aurora Serverless Postgres Pricing (2024): Master Your Costs & Maximize Savings – No More Surprises!
Aurora Serverless PostgreSQL pricing is fundamentally a pay-per-use model, designed to automatically scale computing and memory resources based on your application's demand. Unlike traditional provisioned instances where you select a fixed instance type, Serverless abstracts this away, charging for resource consumption measured in specific units.
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Amazon Web Services
docs.aws.amazon.com › amazon rds › user guide for aurora › getting started with amazon aurora › creating and connecting to an aurora postgresql db cluster › create with express configuration
Create with express configuration - Amazon Aurora
June 19, 2026 - In two clicks, you can have an Aurora cluster with a serverless instance ready to use in seconds. You can also use the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) or AWS SDKs with the parameter --express-configuration to create both a cluster and an instance within the cluster with single API call ...
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Tutorials Dojo
portal.tutorialsdojo.com › home
Home - Tutorials Dojo
November 7, 2024 - Welcome to the Tutorials Dojo PortalWe offer the best AWS, Azure and other IT certification exam reviewers in different training modes to help you pass
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GitHub
github.com › sindresorhus › awesome
GitHub - sindresorhus/awesome: 😎 Awesome lists about all kinds of interesting topics
Serverless Framework - Serverless computing and serverless architectures.
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Amazon Web Services
aws.amazon.com › home › aws pricing
AWS Product and Service Pricing | Amazon Web Services
5 days ago - Learn how AWS pay-as-you approach to pricing works, and calculate your solution. With AWS you pay only for the individual services you need, for as long as you use them, and without requiring long-term contracts or complex licensing.