Difficulty
Commitment
Description
We identified potential savings with Database Savings Plans to reduce your AWS on-demand costs across database services. Database Savings Plans offer up to 35% savings in exchange for a commitment to a consistent amount of usage (measured in $/hour) over a 1-year term with no upfront payment. The commitment automatically applies to eligible usage across Aurora, RDS, DynamoDB, ElastiCache, DocumentDB, Neptune, Keyspaces, Timestream, DMS, and OpenSearch Service — regardless of engine, instance family, size, deployment option, or AWS Region.
Selection Criteria
Have on-demand spend in at least one eligible database service: Aurora, RDS, DynamoDB, ElastiCache, DocumentDB, Neptune, Neptune Analytics, Keyspaces, Timestream, DMS, or OpenSearch Service.
Analysis is performed based on historical usage patterns with a 30-day lookback period.
On-demand spend exceeds the minimum threshold to make a commitment financially worthwhile.
⚠️ Warning — Irregular or seasonal workloads: Database Savings Plans are less suitable when database usage fluctuates significantly. Verify usage consistency before committing.
⚠️ Warning — Existing Reserved Instances or DynamoDB reserved capacity: Database Savings Plans cannot be combined with RDS Reserved Instances or DynamoDB reserved capacity for the same workload. Verify existing commitments before purchasing to avoid over-commitment.
Expected Saving
Database Savings Plans offer discounts over on-demand rates depending on the service and deployment type. Only a 1-year term is available (no 3-year option).
Service / Deployment type | Max savings vs on-demand |
Serverless (Aurora Serverless v2, DocumentDB Serverless, Neptune Serverless, DMS Serverless) | Up to 35% |
Provisioned instances (Aurora, RDS, ElastiCache, DocumentDB, Neptune, OpenSearch, DMS) | Up to 20% |
DynamoDB / Keyspaces — on-demand throughput | Up to 18% |
DynamoDB / Keyspaces — provisioned capacity | Up to 12% |
Example — Aurora provisioned cluster (3 × db.r7g.large, us-east-1, 1-year, No Upfront):
Current on-demand cost: ~$0.48/hr/node × 3 nodes × 8,760 hrs = ~$12,614/year
With Database Savings Plan (~20% discount): ~$10,091/year
Savings: ~$2,523/year for the cluster
⚠️ Actual savings depend on the specific service, instance type, region, and whether the workload is provisioned or serverless. The recommendation shows the estimated savings based on your historical usage.
Operational Impact
Downtime: None — this is a billing model change only. No infrastructure is modified.
⚠️ Warning — Irrevocable financial commitment: Database Savings Plans cannot be cancelled once purchased. The committed $/hour amount is billed regardless of actual usage for the full 1-year term.
⚠️ Warning — Under-utilization risk: If actual database usage falls below the committed $/hr amount, the unused portion is still billed at the committed rate. Size the commitment conservatively, especially for variable workloads.
⚠️ Warning — Incompatibility with existing RDS Reserved Instances / DynamoDB reserved capacity: For the same workload, you cannot stack a Database Savings Plan on top of an existing RDS RI or DynamoDB reserved capacity. The plan must cover a different portion of your usage. Verify existing commitments before purchasing.
⚠️ Warning — Database SP scope: Covers all eligible database services across all regions. Ensure the recommended commitment amount reflects cross-service and cross-region usage, not just a single service.
Recovery: No cancellation is possible. The plan runs to expiration (1 year). If usage increases, additional Database Savings Plans can be purchased on top of an existing commitment.