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
Harnesses a journal and adjudicator for distributed writes
Replication of data at storage layer; replication across regions is asynchronous
PostgreSQL compatible with shard key considerations
*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.
Freedom from lock-in
Make smart use of your existing resources with CockroachDB’s hybrid-cloud capabilities. AWS Aurora won’t let you deploy in a hybrid environment
Freedom of choice
Pick any (or multiple) providers and run self-deployed or as-a-service. Because no one should have to be locked into a single provider
Freedom to grow
Effortlessly scale and take control of your workloads. Avoid the significant egress costs often seen when moving data with AWS Aurora
1. What is the difference between CockroachDB and Amazon Aurora Global Database?
The main difference is architecture.
CockroachDB is a true active-active, multi-region distributed SQL database. Any node in any region can serve reads and writes with strong consistency.
Amazon Aurora Global Database uses a single-writer, active-passive model. All writes must go to one primary region, while secondary regions provide read-only replicas with eventual consistency.
This means CockroachDB supports global multi-region writes, while Aurora centralizes writes in one region, which can create write bottlenecks and higher latency for global users.
2. Does Amazon Aurora support multi-region writes?
Aurora Global Database does not support multi-region writes. All write operations must go to a single primary region.
Aurora DSQL supports multi-region writes, but only within specific region sets and within a single continent.
CockroachDB supports multi-region and multi-continent writes. All nodes in all regions can accept reads and writes with strong consistency.
3. Which offers better disaster recovery: CockroachDB or Aurora?
CockroachDB provides synchronous replication, automatic failover, native point-in-time recovery (PITR), and granular restore options at the table, database, or cluster level.
Aurora Global Database relies on daily snapshots and asynchronous cross-region replication. Unplanned failover can introduce data loss risk and requires manual coordination.
Aurora DSQL uses synchronous replication but lacks point-in-time recovery and only supports full snapshot restores.
CockroachDB is designed for automated, self-healing disaster recovery with minimal RPO and fast recovery.
4. Can CockroachDB survive a full region outage?
Yes.
CockroachDB is designed to survive node failures, availability zone outages, and full regional outages. It uses quorum-based Raft consensus and synchronous replication to maintain availability and consistency.
Failover is automatic when quorum is maintained, with no data loss.
5. What scalability limits should teams know about with Amazon Aurora?
Aurora Global Database scales reads effectively but has a single-writer bottleneck for writes. At larger scale, teams may need to manually shard the database, increasing operational complexity.
Aurora DSQL improves write scaling but introduces workload and regional constraints.
CockroachDB scales horizontally for both reads and writes by adding nodes. It automatically shards and rebalances data without downtime, eliminating manual sharding and single-writer bottlenecks.
6. Does Aurora DSQL fully support PostgreSQL features?
No.
Aurora DSQL lacks support for several common PostgreSQL features, including foreign keys, triggers, sequences, stored procedures (PL/pgSQL), and various extensions. Applications may require refactoring.
Aurora Global Database offers near-complete PostgreSQL compatibility.
CockroachDB supports broad PostgreSQL compatibility for the majority of real-world use cases, including foreign keys, stored procedures, triggers, materialized views, and SERIALIZABLE isolation by default.
7. Which database supports zero-downtime upgrades?
CockroachDB supports rolling, node-by-node upgrades with no application downtime. It also supports zero-downtime rolling repaves and online schema changes.
Aurora Global Database typically requires maintenance windows for upgrades and major operations.
Aurora DSQL upgrades are AWS-managed, but customers do not control upgrade timing.
8. What is “Performance Under Adversity” in CockroachDB?
Performance Under Adversity is a resilience-focused benchmarking methodology that measures throughput, latency, and recovery time during real-world failure scenarios.
It includes testing disk stalls, network failures, node restarts, availability zone outages, and regional outages — not just peak performance under ideal conditions.
The goal is to evaluate how a database performs during disruption, not just when everything is running normally.
9. Can Amazon Aurora run in multi-cloud or hybrid environments?
No.
Aurora Global Database and Aurora DSQL run exclusively on AWS infrastructure.
CockroachDB is cloud-agnostic and can run across AWS, GCP, Azure, self-hosted environments, hybrid deployments, and multi-cloud architectures. This eliminates vendor lock-in and supports regulatory or resilience requirements.
10. What migration tools help teams move to CockroachDB?
CockroachDB provides the MOLT (Migrate Off Legacy Technology) toolkit, which includes tools to extract schema and data, convert schemas with CockroachDB-specific optimizations, and validate data consistency.
AWS provides Database Migration Service (DMS), a paid service for migrating databases within the AWS ecosystem.
CockroachDB also offers professional services to support migration assessment, planning, execution, validation, and performance optimization.
