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Amazon RDS vs Snowflake
Short answer: Pick Amazon RDS if you want managed relational databases with high availability; pick Snowflake if you want unified, cross-cloud data and AI platform. Both have a free plan.
Which to pick
Pick Amazon RDS if you want…
- Managed relational databases with high availability
- Integrations with AWS Outposts or Amazon RDS Proxy (on Amazon RDS's list, not Snowflake's)
Pick Snowflake if you want…
- Unified, cross-cloud data and AI platform
- Scalable cloud data platform
- Integrations with AWS, Azure or GCP (on Snowflake's list, not Amazon RDS's)
Side by side
- What it is
- Amazon RDS:Amazon RDS is a fully managed relational database service that simplifies setup, operation, and scaling of multiple database engines on AWS.
- Snowflake:Snowflake is a fully managed cloud data platform that unifies data, analytics, AI and applications across clouds.
- Best for
- Amazon RDS:Managed relational databases with high availability
- Snowflake:Unified, cross-cloud data and AI platform
- Who it’s for
- Amazon RDS:Developers and enterprises needing managed relational databases on AWS
- Snowflake:Enterprises and developers needing scalable, governed data and AI workloads.
- Pricing
- Amazon RDS:Freemium
- Snowflake:Freemium
- Free plan or trial
- Amazon RDS:Free trial
- Snowflake:Free trial
- Plans
- Amazon RDS:—
- Snowflake:Standard $2.00 per credit (USD) · Enterprise $3.00 per credit (USD) · Business Critical $4.00 per credit (USD) · On-Demand Storage $23.00 per TB per month (USD)
- Works with
- Amazon RDS:AWS Outposts, Amazon RDS Proxy
- Snowflake:AWS, Azure, GCP, Open table formats
Amazon RDS features
- Automated management. Handles provisioning, configuration, backups, and patching automatically.
- Multi-AZ high availability. Provides automated failover with Multi-AZ deployments for resilience.
- Engine choice. Supports eight database engines including Aurora, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, Oracle, SQL Server, and Db2.
- Flexible deployment. Offers on-premises (Outposts), custom OS/database environments, and proxy services.
- Scalable storage. Provides General Purpose SSD and Provisioned IOPS storage options up to 64 TiB.
- Pricing flexibility. Pay-as-you-go on-demand, Reserved Instances, and Free Tier with no minimum fees.
Snowflake features
- Fully managed service. Handles infrastructure, security and governance so users focus on data and insights.
- Cross-cloud connectivity. Runs on AWS, Azure and GCP with open table format interoperability.
- Data engineering pipelines. Build reliable, continuous data pipelines in any language.
- Analytics & AI workloads. Run analytics, LLMs and ML models with built-in security and low maintenance.
- Applications & Collaboration. Share live data, develop and scale apps, and use AI agents like CoWork and CoCo.
- Transactional support. Combine transactional, analytical and AI queries on a single platform.
Amazon RDS vs Snowflake FAQ
What is the difference between Amazon RDS and Snowflake?+
Snowflake is a multi-cloud data platform with separate compute and storage layers.
Should I use Amazon RDS or Snowflake?+
Pick Amazon RDS if you want managed relational databases with high availability or integrations with AWS Outposts or Amazon RDS Proxy (on Amazon RDS's list, not Snowflake's). Pick Snowflake if you want unified, cross-cloud data and AI platform, scalable cloud data platform or integrations with AWS, Azure or GCP (on Snowflake's list, not Amazon RDS's).
Is Amazon RDS or Snowflake free?+
Amazon RDS has a free plan and paid plans. Snowflake has a free plan and paid plans.
Do Amazon RDS and Snowflake integrate with the same tools?+
Their integration lists don't overlap: Amazon RDS lists AWS Outposts and Amazon RDS Proxy; Snowflake lists AWS, Azure, GCP and Open table formats.
On DevHunt
Based on each tool's website and DevHunt data. Details may change; check the official sites.