MySQL vs Amazon Aurora: When to Migrate and When to Stay in 2026

Amazon Aurora MySQL-compatible is 2–5× faster than standard MySQL for read-heavy workloads, offers automatic storage scaling (up to 128 TiB), and multi-region active-active replication — but at 3–5× the cost of an equivalent RDS MySQL instance. For small applications (< 100 concurrent connections, < 100GB data): MySQL on RDS is cheaper and simpler. For high-traffic production applications with performance and availability requirements: Aurora is the right choice.