AWS RDS Pricing Calculator (2026): Instance + Storage + Backup

AWS RDS Pricing in 2026: The Four Components

RDS pricing decomposes into instance + storage + backup + data transfer. Multi-AZ doubles instance and storage. The cheapest production-grade instance class is db.t4g.medium at $0.065/hr (~$47/mo) — but most teams want at least db.m6g.large for steady production workloads.

When Multi-AZ Pays For Itself

Multi-AZ doubles your monthly cost but provides automatic failover in 60-120 seconds with no data loss. For revenue-bearing services, the math is simple: if downtime costs more than the Multi-AZ premium per outage, it pays for itself. Use the Downtime Cost Calculator to estimate your specific number.

Storage Type Selection

• gp3 (recommended) — same price as gp2 but 3,000 IOPS + 125 MB/s baseline included. Newer, faster, default for new deployments.
• gp2 (legacy) — older general-purpose. Same price, but IOPS scale with size. If you have small storage with high IOPS needs, gp3 is strictly better.
• io1 — premium for predictable high IOPS. Use only when you've proven gp3 isn't enough.
• Magnetic — legacy, don't use for new deployments. Slow.

Cost Optimization Levers

1. Reserved Instances — 30-65% off for 1-3 year commitments
2. Graviton (T4g, M6g, R6g) — ~20% off vs equivalent x86
3. Right-size based on actual CPU + memory + IOPS — CloudWatch metrics + 2-week sampling
4. Aurora Serverless v2 for variable workloads — scales compute by demand
5. Read replicas — offload reads from primary, can use smaller instance class