Aurora Serverless v2 vs RDS: when to use which

Aurora Serverless v2 vs RDS: when to use which (with real cost comparisons) The key difference RDS (provisioned): Fixed capacity, fixed cost, consistent performance Aurora Serverless v2: Scales between min/max ACU, minimum 0.5 ACU always running Cost comparison (PostgreSQL, us-east-1) Scenario 1: Low-traffic dev database (constant) RDS db.t4g.micro: $11.52/month Aurora Serverless v2 0.5: $43.20/month Verdict: RDS wins 4:1 Scenario 2: Predictable production (sized for peak) Aurora Serverless v2: ~$144/month RDS db.t4g.medium: ~$46.80/month Verdict: RDS wins again Scenario 3: Truly unpredictable spikes (rare 16 ACU bursts) Aurora Serverless v2: ~$50-80/month average RDS sized for 16 ACU: $346/month constantly Verdict: Aurora Serverless v2 wins When Aurora Serverless v2 is right Truly unpredictable workloads (traffic that 10xs without warning) Multi-tenant SaaS (many per-tenant databases, mostly idle) Dev databases where you want near-zero cost When standard RDS is better Predictable stea