--- title: "" publish_date: 2026-05-27 --- # ## Stay on AWS. Stop overpaying with RDS. You’ve invested in AWS — and that investment should work harder. MariaDB Cloud runs in your existing AWS environment, leverages your negotiated discounts, and replaces RDS’s structural inefficiencies with 8-year version stability, 99.995% availability, and up to 65% lower TCO. [Book a Strategy Session](https://schedule.qualified.com/ejBwDu9) ![Diagram 1]() THE PROBLEM ### RDS has a cost structure that compounds against you. Your AWS environment is the right call. But RDS introduces a set of structural inefficiencies that quietly drain budget and pull your best engineers away from building product — inefficiencies that have nothing to do with AWS itself. COST ###### The over-provisioning trap RDS forces you to provision for peak capacity you use 5% of the time — and pay for the other 95% just to avoid a crash. Every month. CYCLE ###### The forced migration treadmill RDS community server EOL cycles run just 3 years. Your team inherits the risk and toil of repeated major version upgrades — on RDS’s schedule, not yours. RISK ###### The Redundancy Tax To get “Production-Grade” availability, RDS requires a multi-availability zone deployment, which effectively doubles your bill. You’re paying 100% markup for a standby instance that sits idle. THE SOLUTION ### MariaDB Cloud: more from your AWS investment. MariaDB Cloud deploys directly into your AWS account — so you keep your infrastructure control, your security posture, and your negotiated AWS pricing. What changes is the database layer: more stable, more efficient, and engineered for the long term. SCALABLE PRICING ###### Pay for what you use MariaDB Cloud comes with true autoscaling. Instead of paying for 100% capacity just to survive a 5% spike, the architecture automatically scales resources to match your traffic demands. STABILITY ###### 8-year support lifecycles Escape the 3-year forced upgrade cycle. Enterprise-grade binaries — not community builds — give your team a stable foundation and let you upgrade on your own timeline. PERFORMANCE ###### 100% hardware utilization Active-active clustering means every node processes real traffic. No idle standbys. No paying for capacity that sits dormant while your bill runs up. RESILIENCE ###### 99.995% SLA with cross-cloud resilience Replicate across AWS, GCP, and Azure simultaneously. Your business stays online even in the event of a provider-level incident — not just a zone failure. BRING YOUR OWN ACCOUNT ###### Deploy in your AWS account — your control, your discounts MariaDB Cloud runs inside your own AWS environment. Your data never leaves your perimeter, your security team stays in control, and you leverage your existing AWS committed spend and negotiated rates — so the TCO savings are immediate. | Financial factor | RDS | MariaDB Cloud on AWS | |---|---|---| | Hardware ROI | Pay for standby nodes that process zero traffic | Every node works. Every node is your backup. | | Operational cost | High internal headcount for manual tuning and upgrades | Remote DBA experts act as a force multiplier for your team | | Scaling model | Over-provisioned peak capacity, billed 24/7 | True elasticity — pay for consumption, with scale-to-zero | | Version lifecycle | 3-year EOL forces extended support fees and migrations | 8-year enterprise lifecycle — extends time between major version upgrades | | AWS negotiated pricing | Leverage negotiated AWS rates | BYOA: deploy in your account and apply your negotiated AWS rates directly | | Workload consolidation | Separate services for transactions, analytics and AI | One platform: transactions, analytics and native vector/AI built in | CUSTOMER STORY: VIRGIN MEDIA 02 ![]() ## “As soon as we migrated, all of the failed connections we’d experienced previously disappeared.” Virgin Media O2 needed sub-second authorization for 30M+ subscribers. They didn’t just find stability — they accelerated. **7ms** –> **1ms** Authorization latency ****99.995%**** Uptime with 24×7 proactive monitoring ****Significant**** CapEx and OpEx savings AUDIT YOUR CURRENT STACK ### Find out what RDS is really costing you. Use these resources to pressure-test your current architecture against what’s actually possible on AWS. FEATURED EBOOK ###### The hidden cost of RDS A detailed breakdown of where your database budget is quietly leaking — and how to recover it without leaving AWS. [Read now]() LIVE WEBINAR: MAY 28 ###### The truth about hyperscaler DBaaS high availability A live, side-by-side crash test of standard RDS vs. state-preserving architecture. See the difference under load. [Register Now](https://go.mariadb.com/GLBL_WBN_The_Truth_About_Hyperscaler_DBaaS_High_Availability_FY26Q2_Registration-LP.html) BLOG ###### Stop paying for air: most cloud database spend is wasted [Read Now](https://mariadb.com/resources/blog/stop-paying-for-air-most-cloud-database-spend-is-wasted/) BLOG ###### Business continuity with MariaDB: beyond the checkbox [Read Now](https://mariadb.com/resources/blog/business-continuity-with-mariadb/) BLOG ###### When disaster strikes: a guide to true multi-region DR [Read Now](https://mariadb.com/resources/blog/when-disaster-strikes/) ![]() ## Let’s find what RDS is costing you. Book a discovery call with one of our experts. We’ll analyze your current RDS footprint and show you exactly what a more optimized setup looks like — in your AWS account, on your timeline. [Book a Strategy Session](https://schedule.qualified.com/ejBwDu9)