DBMS > Amazon Aurora vs. Snowflake

System Properties Comparison Amazon Aurora vs. Snowflake

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Our visitors often compare Amazon Aurora and Snowflake with PostgreSQL, Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server.

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Fully managed relational database service built for the cloud providing unparalleled high performance and availability at global scale for MySQL, PostgreSQL, and DSQL

Cloud-based data warehousing service for structured and semi-structured data

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Vector DBMS

DB-Engines Ranking measures the popularity of database management systems
Trend Chart

Score	7.33
Rank	#46	Overall
	#29	Relational DBMS

Score	168.09
Rank	#6	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Website

aws.amazon.com/rds/aurora

www.snowflake.com

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/AuroraUserGuide/CHAP_AuroraOverview.html
docs.aws.amazon.com/aurora-dsql/latest/userguide/what-is-aurora-dsql.html

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

Social network pages

Developer

Amazon

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Initial release

2015

2014

Current release

Aurora DSQL, November 2024 (preview), PostgreSQL: docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/AuroraPostgreSQLReleaseNotes/AuroraPostgreSQL.Updates.html , MySQL: docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/AuroraMySQLReleaseNotes/AuroraMySQL.release-calendars.html

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

Implementation language

PostgreSQL/MySQL: C, C++, Aurora DSQL: Rust

Server operating systems

Amazon Linux

hosted

Data scheme

yes

support of semi-structured data formats (JSON, XML, Avro)

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

XML support

Some form of processing data in XML format, e.g. support for XML data structures, and/or support for XPath, XQuery or XSLT.

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes, MySQL and PostgreSQL dialects

yes

APIs and other access methods

DSQL API: docs.aws.amazon.com/aurora-dsql/latest/userguide/CHAP_api_reference.html
MySQL wire protocol
PostgreSQL wire protocol
RDS Data API: docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/ProgrammingGuide.html

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Rust
Scheme
Tcl

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

PL/pgSQL, MySQL stored program language, APG trusted language extensions

user defined functions

Triggers

Aurora MySQL: Yes. Aurora PostgreSQL: Yes. Aurora DSQL: No.

similar concept for controling cloud resources

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

DBMS table partitioning, Horizontal storage partitioning, Sharding, Distributed horizontal partitioning (DSQL)

yes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Full replication
Logical replication
Snapshot replication
Transactional replication

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate/Strong Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

Support to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of data

ACID, Multi-statement

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

Multiversion concurrency control (MVCC) with fully compatible MySQL and PostgreSQL options. Optimistic concurrency control (OCC) in Aurora DSQL.

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

Data is replicated across 3 Availability Zones (AZs) within a single AWS Region. Active-active multi-Region high availability across 3 Regions (2 active, 1 witness) and automated failover recovery with Aurora DSQL. Automated, continuous backup of data with point in time restore. Fault-tolerant, self-healing storage system.

yes

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

yes

User concepts

Access control

Role based permissions
Row level security

Users with fine-grained authorization concept, user roles and pluggable authentication

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More resources

DB-Engines blog posts

Cloud-based DBMS's popularity grows at high rates
12 December 2019, Paul Andlinger

The popularity of cloud-based DBMSs has increased tenfold in four years
7 February 2017, Matthias Gelbmann

Amazon - the rising star in the DBMS market
3 August 2015, Matthias Gelbmann

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Snowflake is the Database Management System of the Year 2024
16 January 2025, Tom Russell

Snowflake is the DBMS of the Year 2022, defending the title from last year
3 January 2023, Matthias Gelbmann, Paul Andlinger

Snowflake is the DBMS of the Year 2021
3 January 2022, Paul Andlinger, Matthias Gelbmann

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Recent citations in the news

Optimizing cost savings: The advantage of Amazon Aurora over self-managed open source databases
31 March 2025, Amazon Web Services

How Heroku migrated hundreds of thousands of self-managed PostgreSQL databases to Amazon Aurora
10 April 2025, Amazon Web Services

Introducing Amazon Aurora DSQL | Amazon Web Services
3 December 2024, Amazon Web Services

Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL Limitless Database is now generally available
31 October 2024, Amazon Web Services

Upgrade strategies for Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL and Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL 12
26 February 2025, Amazon Web Services

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