Database Ranking Pricing Update 2024

We recently updated the prices of our popular database ranking.

A good opportunity to take a closer look at the price development of the cloud infrastructure of AWS and MS Azure as well as selected Database-as-a-Service products.

The results are surprising and very inconsistent.

Key Takeaways

The popular benchANT Database Ranking provides performance and cost metrics for popular database engines and DBaaS products for several workload types like CRUD, OLTP and time-series.
In 2022 the first data including prices for cloud infrastructures were added to the ranking. You can see some interesting pricing changes for the most popular cloud providers and DBaaS solutions.
AWS has only made small price adjustments for the elastic cloud infrastructure used in the ranking since 2022. The changes amount to an increase of 1.1 - 1.3 %.
The same applies to the cloud infrastructure prices of MS Azure. Almost no changes are apparent here.
Alibaba Cloud, on the other hand, has even lowered its prices for the infrastructure used. Compared to the prices of 2022, there is a price reduction of 10 - 15 %.
The price reductions at IONOS Cloud, a German cloud provider, are even more dramatic. Here we see a price reduction of almost 44%.
In the DBaaS area, we saw a small price increase of around 1% for MongoDB Atlas.
While AWS has increased its DBaaS prices for the managed PostgreSQL DBaaS flavor by nearly 15%, MS Azure has decreased the comparable DBaaS flavor by just 3-4%.

In the database ranking, the performance of various database systems is measured on up to five different hardware sizes. Comparable standard VMs from the cloud providers are used.

The exact hardware specifications can be found in detail as a tool tip in the measured values and below the measurement table of database ranking.

Cloud Infrastructure Pricing Update

AWS

AWS virtual machines:

xsmall: 1x m5.large (2 cores, 8 GB RAM)
small: 1x m5.xlarge (4 cores, 16 GB RAM)
medium: 3x m5.xlarge (4 cores, 16 GB RAM)
large: 3x m5.2xlarge (8 cores, 32 GB RAM)
xlarge: 9x m5.2xlarge (8 cores, 32 GB RAM)

AWS is the largest Cloud infrastructure provider worldwide.
Between 2022 and 2024 the monthly costs of the selected VMs have not changed significantly.

MS Azure

MS Azure virtual machines:

xsmall: 1x D2ds_v4 (2 cores, 8 GB RAM)
small: 1x D4ds_v4 (4 cores, 16 GB RAM)
medium: 3x D4ds_v4 (4 cores, 16 GB RAM)

MS Azure is the biggest competitor to AWS.
MS Azure has not changed its VM prices for the selected resources, either.
The monthly costs compared to AWS are slightly lower.
Due to some unavailability of larger resources in 2022 the large and xlarge sizes are not in the ranking.

Alibaba Cloud

Alibaba Cloud virtual machines:

xsmall: 1x g7.large (2 cores, 8 GB RAM)
small: 1x g7.xlarge (4 cores, 16 GB RAM)
medium: 3x g7.xlarge (4 cores, 16 GB RAM)
large: 3x g7.2xlarge (8 cores, 32 GB RAM)
xlarge: 9x g7.2xlarge (8 cores, 32 GB RAM)

Alibaba Cloud is one of the biggest non-US Cloud providers in the world, located in China with a worldwide coverage of data centers.
Compared to 2022, Alibaba Cloud has lowered the infrastructure pricing by 10 – 15 %.
The current prices are lower than the comparable resources of AWS and MS Azure.

IONOS Cloud

IONOS Cloud virtual machines:

xsmall: 1x Skylake 2 cores, 8 GB RAM
small: 1x Skylake 4 cores, 16 GB RAM
medium: 3x Skylake 4 cores, 16 GB RAM
large: 3x Skylake 8 cores, 32 GB RAM
xlarge: 9x Skylake 8 cores, 32 GB RAM

IONOS Cloud is a German Cloud provider and part of a larger telecommunication company.
The price development of IONOS in the last 2 years is significant. Prices have been reduced by around 40%.
With the current prices, IONOS Cloud is cheaper than the previous 3 cloud providers.

Database-as-a-Service Pricing Update

In addition to the measurements of database systems on cloud infrastructure, the performance measurement results of selected Database-as-a-Service products (DBaaS) can also be found in the Database ranking.

Here, too, comparable hardware was used for the measurements and the exact hardware specification can be found in the ranking as a tool tip.

MongoDB Atlas

MongoDB Atlas virtual machines:

medium: 3x M40 (4 cores, 16 GB RAM)
large: 3x M50 (8 cores, 32 GB RAM)

MongoDB Atlas is the DBaaS service from MongoDB, the best-known and largest NoSQL database.
The prices for the DBaaS instances have fallen marginally compared to 2022.

AWS RDS for PostgreSQL

AWS RDS for PostgreSQL virtual machines:

xsmall: 1x db.m5.large (2 cores, 8 GB RAM)
small: 1x db.m5.xlarge (4 cores, 16 GB RAM)

AWS RDS for PostgreSQL is the DBaaS service from AWS for managed PostgreSQL instances.
The prices for the 2 selected instances have increased by almost 15% compared to 2022.

MS Azure Database for PostgreSQL

MS Azure Database for PostgreSQL virtual machines:

xsmall: 1x D2ds_v4 (2 cores, 8 GB RAM)
small: 1x D4ds_v4 (4 cores, 16 GB RAM)

MS Azure Database for PostgreSQL is the DBaaS service from MS Azure for managed PostgreSQL instances.
The prices have slightly decreased by 4%.

Conclusion

The development of prices for cloud resources is interesting. While there has been high inflation almost everywhere worldwide, the selected VM prices of AWS and MS Azure have remained almost identical and the prices of Alibaba Cloud and IONOS Cloud have fallen significantly.

The prices considered in the DBaaS market have also changed only slightly in the most cases. The sharp price reduction for MS Azure's DBaaS service is certainly interesting.

Such price developments indicate increased competition between providers of cloud infrastructures and managed databases.

Nevertheless, it must be said once again that the price alone is not meaningful because, as the database ranking also shows, the performance of seemingly identical technologies and resources can differ greatly in some cases.