Speaking to a dev recently about why AWS RDS is so expensive when using the ‘easy create’ option.
This is the option in the set up wizard when creating a database. She was looking to get the free-tier settings and although there was minimal usage or issues connecting to the DB she got charged unexpectedly around $10 a day.
She was confused, as setting up other DBs on sites like Firebase or Heroku usually have less surprises.
Looking at the cost breakdown it looked like there were some settings that weren’t quite right. The first thing to notice was the size of the instance being used m6g.large, this is priced around $3.81 a day.
Checking all of the details when using the AWS set up wizards is a bit of a pain but to avoid undesirable costs, it’s a must.
Things like instance size, storage options, multi AZ deployments all influence the cost. The defaults given during console point an click setups doesn’t always fall in the free tier.
With RDS is usually better to avoid the convenient “easy create” and use “standard create” instead.
AWS makes it easy to spin up RDS, but not so easy to keep costs under control. A few misconfigurations can add hundreds to your monthly bill. Want a streamlined, cost-efficient RDS setup without the guesswork?
Check out the RDS cost optimization service.