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Postgres pricing

Is Cloud SQL cheaper than Amazon RDS?

Short answer: it depends on your workload. Cloud SQL bills around the clock; Amazon RDS bills around the clock. The two cases below flip the answer.

Bursty or idle workload
1 CU, ~4 h/day, scale-to-zero, 10 GB
Cloud SQL$52.29
Amazon RDS$47.87
Amazon RDS is cheaper here
Steady, always-on workload
2 CU, 24/7, 50 GB
Cloud SQL$110
Amazon RDS$129
Cloud SQL is cheaper here

Cloud SQL: Managed Postgres on Google Cloud, priced per vCPU and RAM. It bills per vCPU-hour + per GB-RAM-hour, 24/7.

Amazon RDS: Managed Postgres on AWS, billed around the clock per instance. It bills per instance-hour, 24/7, no scale-to-zero.

So Cloud SQL is cheaper than Amazon RDS for steady, always-on databases, and more expensive for the other. Your real answer depends on your compute size, how many hours a day the database is active, and your storage.

Run your exact numbers

Move the sliders for your workload and see Cloud SQL, Amazon RDS, and the others side by side.

Open the comparator
Is Cloud SQL cheaper than Amazon RDS?

It depends on your workload. For a bursty or idle database, Amazon RDS is usually cheaper (about $47.87 vs $52.29 in our reference case). For a steady, always-on database, Cloud SQL comes out ahead. Run your own numbers in the comparator.

What decides which is cheaper?

Mostly whether your database can idle. Cloud SQL bills around the clock; Amazon RDS bills around the clock. Compute size and storage matter too.

Whichever you pick, FluentDB is the Mac client for it.

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See also: Is Amazon RDS cheaper than Cloud SQL? · Prices last verified 2026-08-01.