CockroachDB vs Amazon Aurora and DSQL

Distributed SQL has become the go-to choice for modern applications, offering the scalability, resilience, and performance needed in today’s global landscape. However, not all distributed SQL databases are created equal.

In this comparison, we look at CockroachDB in comparison to both Amazon Aurora, a cloud database with scalable extensions but with limited resilience and scalability, and Amazon DSQL, Amazon’s answer to resilient and scalable Postgres. You’ll learn that in both cases, Amazon’s offerings fall short in comparison with CockroachDB in scalability, resilience, and geo-placement of data. Readers will also find that for those who need two-data center resilience or hybrid and on-prem configurations, CockroachDB remains the only choice.

Why CockroachDB over Amazon Aurora?

Unlimited write scale

CockroachDB allows you to scale both reads and writes with every endpoint accepting all transactions

Global data

CockroachDB provides simple DDL that allows you to define where data will live across multiple regions

Multi-region scale

CockroachDB delivers an automated, simple and resource efficient database that can can span regions, clouds, and self-hosted environments

Why CockroachDB over Amazon DSQL

PostgreSQL Compatibility

CockroachDB has greater PostgreSQL compatibility with support for triggers, user defined functions, and stored procedures

Transactional Support

CockroachDB guarantees true serializable isolation by default—delivering uncompromising accuracy even at massive scale

Data Residency

CockroachDB offers native support for regional data placement to deliver multi-region data domiciling

Side-by-side comparison

Features

Availability

All public clouds, on-prem, and local

AWS only

Architecture

Architected to span globally distributed data centers, yet still valuable in single data center

Single write node in one data center, then sync data across regions for distributed reads

Harnesses a journal and adjudicator for distributed writes

Replication

Intelligent replication uses Raft to place data and efficiently utilize storage and compute

Replication of data at storage layer; replication across regions is asynchronous

Replication of data at storage layer; replication across regions is synchronous

Writes

Every node is a gateway to the entirety of the database for unlimited reads and writes in any region

Single node writes causes bottlenecks (multimaster limited)

Each node is capable of writing to any piece of data using OCC with snapshot isolation

Multi-region Writes

Native, all nodes can accept reads and writes even across regions

Write operations must go through the primary region; secondary regions use write forwarding to route writes to the primary

All nodes can accept reads and writes, even across regions

Data Residency

Tie data to a node to optimize performance or comply with data regulations

No ability to tie data to a location

PostgreSQL Compatibility

PostgreSQL compatible

PostgreSQL compatible with shard key considerations

Unsupported objects, constraints, operations, extensions, expressions

Transactional Consistency

Serializable, guaranteed consistent

Configurable within single region

Snapshot isolation with OCC which limits access patterns

Ideal Use Case

Single-region or multiple-region applications that may need to scale and want the freedom to run in any cloud or self-hosted environment

Single-region applications that will not scale and are tied to AWS

OCC specific greenfield, AWS-centric architecture where a multi-tenant serverless database is appropriate

Pricing

Simple, straightforward pricing, plus the ability to tie data to a location to avoid egress costs

A-la-carte pricing for IOPS/storage, backups are additional costs & cross-region replication incurs egress cost

Pay-as-you-go usage of compute (measured in Distributed Processing Units) and storage (measured in GB-months)

^{*Comparison data as of April 2025}

Databases and platform freedom

CockroachDB is architected to give you the freedom to deploy your database anywhere, on any cloud. Use the best solution for your workloads and still gain value from any cloud provider.