How accurate are these estimates?

The estimates are based on AWS US East (N. Virginia) on-demand public pricing as of mid-2025. Actual bills vary by region, reserved-instance discounts, data transfer, and multi-AZ I/O charges. Use this tool for budgeting and comparisons, not as a billing guarantee.

What is Multi-AZ and does it double the cost?

Multi-AZ deploys a synchronous standby replica in a different Availability Zone for automatic failover. It roughly doubles compute and storage costs but is strongly recommended for production workloads where downtime is costly.

What is the difference between gp2 and gp3 storage?

gp3 is the newer generation. It costs about 20% less per GB than gp2 and lets you provision up to 3,000 IOPS and 125 MB/s baseline independently of storage size. gp2 ties IOPS to storage (3 IOPS/GB, max 16,000). For most workloads, gp3 is cheaper.

When should I use io1 storage?

Use io1 when you need more than 16,000 IOPS or need a specific IOPS-to-storage ratio not achievable with gp3. io1 is significantly more expensive but offers up to 64,000 IOPS and consistent latency.

Does this include data transfer costs?

No. Data transfer out to the internet and cross-AZ traffic are not included. For most single-region deployments these costs are relatively small, but they can add up at scale.

RDS Cost Estimator

Name: RDS Cost Estimator
Availability: InStock
Author: Nham Vu

Select your RDS engine, instance class, storage type, and options to get an estimated monthly AWS cost breakdown.

Configuration

Database Engine

Instance Class

Storage Type

Allocated Storage (GB)

Minimum 20 GB; maximum 65,536 GB

Multi-AZ Deployment

Standby replica in a second AZ

Backup Storage (GB)

Storage exceeding 100% of database size is billed at $0.095/GB-month.

Configure options and click Calculate to see your cost estimate.

Estimated Monthly Cost

$0.00 / month

US East (N. Virginia) on-demand pricing. Excludes data transfer.

Line Item	Detail	Cost

Cost Optimization Tips

Summary

Select your RDS engine, instance class, storage type, and options to get an estimated monthly AWS cost breakdown.

How it works

Choose your database engine (MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, SQL Server SE, or Oracle SE2).
Select an instance class from db.t3.micro to db.r6g.4xlarge.
Pick a storage type — gp2 (general purpose), gp3 (lower cost gp2 successor), or io1 (provisioned IOPS).
Enter your allocated storage in GB and, for io1, the provisioned IOPS.
Toggle Multi-AZ (standby replica) and set backup retention storage if needed.
The estimator computes compute, storage, I/O, and backup line-item costs and shows a monthly total.

Use cases

Budget a new RDS deployment before provisioning resources.
Compare gp2 vs gp3 vs io1 storage cost for a given IOPS target.
Evaluate the cost delta of enabling Multi-AZ for high availability.
Estimate cost savings from downsizing an over-provisioned instance class.
Plan quarterly cloud spend for finance or DevOps teams.
Compare engine-tier pricing (MySQL vs SQL Server vs Oracle) side by side.

Frequently Asked Questions

Last updated: 2026-07-22 · Reviewed by Nham Vu