Amazon RDS Cost & Rightsizing Calculator
Estimate instance and storage cost, isolate the Multi-AZ premium, and compare practical ways to reduce it.
Covers Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL, MySQL and MariaDB in 11 AWS Regions. Prices in USD from the AWS Price List, refreshed 2026-10-19.
Your database
Each one fills in the fields below for a typical workload of that kind. You can change any of them.
Currency: USD. AWS publishes these list prices in US dollars only.
Open-source engines; no edition or license to choose.
A Multi-AZ DB instance has one standby. A Multi-AZ DB cluster has a writer and two readable standbys (PostgreSQL and MySQL only).
Advanced optionsShow
Major version. It decides which classes you can use and whether Extended Support is charged.
Commitments discount instance hours only, and bill every hour of the term.
Non-production unlocks the Single-AZ and schedule options. It doesn't change the price.
Your estimated RDS cost
- Annualized at the current monthly estimate, USD
- $17,994
- Multi-AZ premium, USD a month
- $749.76
This is a planning estimate based on public AWS list prices. It excludes taxes, negotiated rates and any charges listed below as not modeled. Actual cost depends on usage and account-level discounts. US East (N. Virginia) list prices, refreshed 2026-10-19.
Estimated monthly cost $1,500 US dollars.
Cost breakdown
| Component | Quantity | Unit rate | USD a month |
|---|---|---|---|
| db.m5.large, Multi-AZ DB instance, On-DemandDB instance hours | 2,920 hours | $0.356 | $1,039.52 |
| General Purpose SSD (gp3), Multi-AZ DB instanceProvisioned storage | 2,000 GiB-month | $0.23 | $460.00 |
| Estimated monthly cost (USD) | $1,499.52 | ||
| Annualized at the current monthly estimate (USD) | $17,994.24 | ||
What Multi-AZ actually costs
The standby instance.
Multi-AZ storage, IOPS and throughput are billed at about twice the Single-AZ rate.
Against the same configuration as Single-AZ. Commitments discount the compute part only.
Not included in this estimate
- Taxes, negotiated rates and credits. The estimate uses public list prices.
- Cross-Region read replicas, snapshot copies and their transfer. Not modeled.
- RDS Proxy, Performance Insights and Database Insights, snapshot export, Blue/Green deployments. Not modeled.
- SQL Server, Oracle, Db2 and Aurora. Other engines and licenses are not covered by this calculator.
How this was calculated
Show
- db.m5.large, Multi-AZ DB instance, On-Demand$1,040 USD a month
- Quantity
- 2,920 hours
- Public unit rate
- $0.356 per hour
- Multipliers
- 4 deployments x 730 h
- Monthly formula
- 730 h x 4 x $0.356/h (primary and standby) = $1,040
- Source
- AWS Price List, refreshed 2026-10-19
- General Purpose SSD (gp3), Multi-AZ DB instance$460.00 USD a month
- Quantity
- 2,000 GiB-month
- Public unit rate
- $0.23 per GiB-month
- Multipliers
- 4 x 500 GiB
- Monthly formula
- 500 GiB x 4 x $0.23 per GiB-month (Multi-AZ rate, the standby's copy included) = $460.00
- Source
- AWS Price List, refreshed 2026-10-19
Assumptions
- A month is 730 hours. Prices are public On-Demand, Reserved Instance or Database Savings Plan list rates in USD.
- A Reserved Instance's effective hourly rate is its hourly rate plus the upfront payment spread over the term (8,760 hours a year). Commitments are billed for all 730 hours.
- A Database Savings Plan commitment is assumed to equal the plan rate of the instances priced here.
- Read replicas are Single-AZ, in the same Region, with the same class, storage type and size as their source.
- Data transfer between Availability Zones is billed on both the sending and the receiving side. Internet egress uses the tiered rates without the account-wide 100 GB free tier.
- Extended Support follows running hours. The year band (Years 1 and 2, or Year 3) is the one in force today.
- Right-size options need peak CPU of at most 60% and peak memory of at most 75% of the smaller class. Storage options keep 20% headroom above measured peak IOPS.
- Instance class support comes from the AWS class support table. Confirm a class for your exact version with
aws rds describe-orderable-db-instance-options.
Pricing data
US East (N. Virginia) (us-east-1) rates from the AWS Price List, refreshed 2026-10-19: AmazonRDS published 2026-10-06, Database Savings Plans 2026-10-13, data transfer 2026-09-16.
- AmazonRDS price list
- AWSDatabaseSavingsPlans price list
- AWSDataTransfer price list
- DB instance storage (gp3, io1, io2 limits) (read 2026-10-19)
- Stopping a DB instance (read 2026-10-19)
- Multi-AZ DB clusters and their limitations (read 2026-10-19)
- Reserved DB instances (read 2026-10-19)
- Savings Plans types (Database Savings Plans) (read 2026-10-19)
- Supported engines for DB instance classes (read 2026-10-19)
- Extended Support charges (read 2026-10-19)
- RDS FAQs (free backup storage, stopped instances) (read 2026-10-19)
Current and proposed
Price a proposed configuration against this one. The whole proposal is recalculated, so changes that overlap are never double counted.
Options to review
Ranked by estimated monthly difference. Each is a full recalculation of one change; options overlap, so don't add them up. Compare a combination above.
Reserved Instance, 3 years, All Upfront
Saves about $621.85 a month ($7,462 a year)Needs $15,036 paid upfront; the monthly figure spreads it over the term.
- Affects
- DB instance hours
- Preconditions
- The database will run at this size, in this Region, for the whole term.
- No existing commitment already covers it (this tool can't see your account history).
- You can pay the whole term upfront and accept a 3-year lock-in.
- Trade-off
- The largest discount, the longest lock-in, and the whole term paid upfront.
- Effort
- Low
- AWS docs
- Read the documentation
Reserved Instance, 1 year, No Upfront
Saves about $373.76 a month ($4,485 a year)- Affects
- DB instance hours
- Preconditions
- The database will run at this size, in this Region, for the whole term.
- No existing commitment already covers it (this tool can't see your account history).
- Trade-off
- A 1-year commitment billed every hour; covers instance hours only.
- Effort
- Low
- AWS docs
- Read the documentation
Move to db.m6g.large (Graviton)
Saves about $110.96 a month ($1,332 a year)- Affects
- DB instance hours
- Preconditions
- db.m6g.large supports PostgreSQL 16, per the AWS class support table.
- Extensions and any native code are available for Arm64.
- Trade-off
- Moving to Graviton is normally an RDS instance-class change. The target class must support the current engine and version, and older versions may require an upgrade. Test compatibility and plan for a reboot or failover.
- Effort
- Medium
- AWS docs
- Read the documentation
Checked, not shown
- Right-size: Enter measured peak CPU and memory under Advanced options to check a smaller class. Price alone is not a reason to downsize.
- Database Savings Plan: m5 isn't covered; Database Savings Plans apply to newer instance generations.
Commitment options can't see your account history, so they are not an account-specific saving.
And the carbon
Running this today: about 108 to 259 kg COâ‚‚e a year in us-east-1 (343 g/kWh).
Reserved Instances and Database Savings Plans change the price, not the hardware or the hours, so they save no carbon. An estimate of the servers’ electricity (compute and memory, with data center overhead), location-based, from Cloud Carbon Footprint’s coefficients; your provider’s own carbon tool is the authoritative figure. Estimate a whole workload or see the methodology.
No sign-up: estimates, links and exports are free. Stopped instances restart after 7 days.
Prices verified 19 Oct 2026. Public list prices in USD for 11 AWS Regions, before any discount you have negotiated.
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Questions
How much does RDS Multi-AZ cost?
It depends on the deployment type, and it is more than the standby instance. A Multi-AZ DB instance has one standby: in US East (N. Virginia) a db.m5.large for PostgreSQL is $0.356 an hour against $0.178 Single-AZ, and gp3 storage is $0.23 per GiB-month against $0.115. A Multi-AZ DB cluster has a writer and two readable standbys with its own rates: gp3 storage is $0.345 per GiB-month. The calculator shows the compute and storage parts of the premium separately.
Is RDS on Graviton cheaper?
Usually, at the same vCPU and memory: in US East (N. Virginia) a db.m6g.large for PostgreSQL lists at $0.159 an hour against $0.178 for a db.m5.large. Moving to Graviton is normally an RDS instance-class change. The target class must support the current engine and version, and older versions may require an upgrade. Test compatibility and plan for a reboot or failover.
Can you stop an RDS instance to save money?
Yes, a Single-AZ or Multi-AZ DB instance, for up to seven days: RDS then starts it again, so a schedule needs automation that stops it again. Storage, provisioned IOPS and backups keep billing while it is stopped. A Multi-AZ DB cluster can't be stopped, and neither can an instance that has read replicas or is one.
Do Reserved Instances or Savings Plans cover RDS storage?
No. AWS says a reserved DB instance doesn't discount storage, backups or I/O, and this calculator applies Database Savings Plans to instance hours only. Database Savings Plans cover newer instance generations (for example db.m7g and db.r7g, not db.m5 or db.m6g) and can't be combined with an RDS Reserved Instance for the same usage.
Should development databases run Multi-AZ?
Often not. Multi-AZ buys availability through an Availability Zone failure, which a development or staging database may not need. It is common there because the environment was created from the production module. Check who depends on the environment before removing the standby.
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Pricing one database is easy. Reviewing a whole estate is the work.
Finitizer can inventory RDS across your accounts with read-only access and list the non-production databases running Multi-AZ, the x86 classes with a compatible Graviton class, and the Reserved Instances about to expire.
See how Finitizer works