What does RDS for MySQL cost, and is a private MySQL server cheaper?

If your RDS for MySQL database still runs MySQL 8.0, your bill grew a new line in August. RDS ended standard support for 8.0 on July 31, 2026, and AWS moved those databases into paid Extended Support unless it had been turned off for that database. On a db.t4g.micro, that fee is $146 a month, more than ten times what the database itself costs.

Three other lines each add less than that fee, and they're the ones to look for on your own bill first: a standby copy in a second zone, CPU above the instance's baseline, and paid technical support.

What each line of a small RDS bill costs

Every AWS price on this page is for US East (N. Virginia), on demand unless we say otherwise, and before tax. RDS rates come from AWS's price file, read October 19, 2026, and the rest from AWS's pricing pages. We've counted a month as 730 hours. The database is a db.t4g.micro (2 vCPU, 1 GiB of memory) running MySQL 8.4, with 20 GB of gp3 storage and the console's default 7 days of backups. The app server sits in the same Availability Zone, where AWS doesn't charge for data transfer.

Here are those add-ons as monthly totals, each on top of the single-zone database.

On a bigger instance, a db.t4g.small (2 GiB, 50 GB) costs $58.95 a month with a standby, and a db.t4g.medium (4 GiB, 120 GB) costs $121.77. In DreamHost's panel plan list, VPS business has 1 GB of RAM and 20 GB of disk, VPS professional 2 GB and 50 GB, and VPS enterprise 4 GB and 120 GB, so the last two match those sizes. Their prices are on the MySQL VPS page. Pick by the size of your data: our guide to how much RAM MySQL needs measured where each plan's memory stops fitting.

Where a small RDS bill grows

A standby copy doubles it

AWS's own FAQ calls Multi-AZ a natural fit for production environments. You pay for the standby as a second instance, and storage costs twice as much per GB, so both lines of the database double.

CPU above the baseline bills by the hour

A t4g.micro can use 10% of each of its 2 vCPUs around the clock, going by AWS's credit table for burstable instances, which we've applied to RDS's db.t4g. RDS runs every db.t4g in Unlimited mode, so a busy database never slows to that baseline. AWS bills the extra instead, whenever average CPU over 24 hours sits above it, at $0.075 per vCPU-hour. At 30% average CPU, the micro runs 292 vCPU-hours a month over its allowance. The CPUCredits line on your own bill shows what yours costs.

Technical support is a separate plan

AWS's free Basic Support covers 24/7 customer service, documentation and the re:Post forum. Technical support cases start with Business Support+, at $29 a month or 9% of your AWS bill, whichever is more. On a database this small, 9% comes to about $1.26, so you'd pay the $29 minimum.

MySQL 8.0 now costs extra

Since August 1, 2026, every RDS for MySQL 8.0 database that wasn't opted out has been enrolled automatically, at $0.10 per vCPU-hour in US East. Opting out now doesn't keep 8.0 for free: a database already past the date upgrades itself to the next major version. AWS charges the fee on the standby too, so a Multi-AZ micro on 8.0 pays $292 of it and $319.96 in all. Reserved Instance discounts don't apply to it. The rate doubles to $0.20 on August 1, 2028, which takes that Multi-AZ micro to $611.96 a month, and Extended Support for 8.0 ends on July 31, 2029.

Read your own RDS bill

You'll need access to the AWS account's billing pages to check these.

1. Filter last month's costs to RDS

   In Cost Explorer, filter by Service to Relational Database Service, then break the cost down by usage type.

2. Match each usage type to its line

   Look for usage types containing these names: InstanceUsage (one zone) or Multi-AZUsage (with a standby), GP3-Storage, ChargedBackupUsage (backups past the free allowance), CPUCredits (CPU above the baseline), ExtendedSupport (the MySQL 8.0 fee) and DataTransfer-Out-Bytes (data out to the internet). AWS Support bills as its own service, and a public IPv4 address on the database shows up under VPC charges.

3. Check the engine version

   Open the database in the RDS console and look at its engine version. Anything starting with 8.0 is in Extended Support unless it was opted out.

What each price includes

The MySQL VPS page says root and SSH access aren't available, and it points you to a Dedicated Server for MySQL's config files.

Your app moves with the database

This page prices the MySQL VPS, the add-on for an app that runs on DreamHost hosting. DreamHost's Help Center describes a MySQL VPS as an add-on to a DreamHost plan, such as Web Hosting, Managed VPS or Dedicated. So you need a DreamHost hosting plan too. The Managed VPS page says a Managed VPS hosts your website files and applications, so it can take the place of the app server you run on AWS now. You'll want its price beside your EC2 line when you compare. An app on AWS could connect from outside once you allow its IP address, but every query would then cross the internet between two providers, and DreamHost's Help Center advises you to keep both in the same data center. If you'd rather run MySQL yourself, with root and your own settings, that's a VPS such as Stack 8, the plan DreamHost's VPS page labels For apps running in production, where you install and update MySQL yourself.

If your site is already on DreamHost and only feels slow, start with whether your database is slowing your site. For the engine choice itself, see MariaDB vs MySQL.

What leaving RDS costs

AWS gives every account 100 GB of data out to the internet free each month, across all its services, and charges $0.09 per GB past that in US East. If you're moving all your data off AWS, or off one AWS service, AWS also offers eligible customers free data transfer out for the move, and its pricing page sends you to AWS Customer Support to ask.

On October 19, 2026, we timed the move on a test VM (not a DreamHost server) to see how big that transfer is and how long it takes, and priced the file at AWS's rate.

Your app has to stop writing while you dump the database, copy the file and import it, or the last changes stay behind on RDS. Gzipping the 10 GB dump added about 6 minutes on our VM, and the network copy's time depends on your connection. A server with 1 GB of RAM imported as fast as one with 4 GB, and none of the imports ran out of memory. To find the row that's nearest yours, DreamHost's size query lists each database's size in MB, data and indexes together, and it works on RDS too.

One charge keeps running after the move. A stopped RDS instance still bills its storage and backups, and RDS starts it again by itself after seven days. That's why the last step deletes it instead of stopping it.

Move a small database to a MySQL VPS

These steps assume you've moved your app to a DreamHost plan, or you're moving it at the same time. The MySQL VPS page lists MySQL 8.0, and DreamHost's Help Center says you can contact support to request 8.4. If your RDS database runs 8.4, ask for that upgrade before you import, so the dump goes into the same major version.

1. Add the MySQL VPS to your DreamHost plan

   Follow the Help Center's steps to add a MySQL VPS. DreamHost's Help Center says setup can take a few hours, and that DreamHost moves every database already on your account to the new server at midnight Pacific time.

2. Create the empty database in the panel

   Create the database and its user on the panel's MySQL Databases page. DreamHost's Help Center says databases can only be created there, never during an import.

3. Dump the database from RDS

   Put the app in maintenance mode. Then, from a machine that can reach RDS, such as your app server on AWS, dump the one database by name. Leaving out --databases keeps CREATE DATABASE lines out of the file, so it imports into the database you just made.

   bashCopy

   mysqldump -h your-db.abc123.us-east-1.rds.amazonaws.com -u admin -p \
     --single-transaction --routines --triggers --set-gtid-purged=OFF \
     appdb > appdb.sql

   --single-transaction gives a consistent copy of InnoDB tables without locking them. --set-gtid-purged=OFF leaves out a SET @@GLOBAL.GTID_PURGED line, since DreamHost's Help Center article on MySQL user limits rules out SET GLOBAL on a MySQL VPS.

4. Remove DEFINER clauses from triggers and routines

   DreamHost's Help Center says a MySQL VPS runs triggers and stored routines but won't accept a DEFINER set by a user without root, so it says to remove it. This strips them from the file and keeps the original as appdb.sql.bak, which you can delete once the import works:

   bashCopy

   sed -E -i.bak 's/DEFINER=`[^`]+`@`[^`]+`//g' appdb.sql

5. Copy the file to your DreamHost server

   Compress the dump and copy it to your DreamHost server over SSH:

   bashCopy

   gzip appdb.sql
   scp appdb.sql.gz your-user@your-dreamhost-server:~/

   Once it's on the DreamHost server, unpack it with gunzip appdb.sql.gz.

6. Import over SSH and switch the app

   DreamHost's Help Center says a file of 64 MB or more has to be imported over SSH instead of phpMyAdmin. From your DreamHost server, run the import with the hostname, user and database from your panel:

   bashCopy

   mysql -h your-mysql-hostname -u dbuser -p appdb < appdb.sql

   Leave disk room for the import. On our test server, MySQL's binary log, which is on by default, grew by about the size of the dump, so ask support how your MySQL VPS handles it if your data is near the plan's disk. Then point the app's database settings at the new host, check it, and take it out of maintenance mode. Take a final RDS snapshot, keep it until you're sure, then delete the instance.

How we measured

DreamHost ran the move on October 19, 2026, on a test VM on an Apple-silicon Mac (arm64, 2 vCPU, about 4 GB of memory, Ubuntu 24.04.4), with MySQL 8.4.11 from Docker's official image as source and target. The three databases were 10 tables of sysbench test data. We dumped each one three times with the flags in the steps above, plus --databases, and report the median. Each dump was imported once into a fresh server capped at 1 GB of memory with MySQL's default 128 MB buffer pool, and once at 4 GB with a 2 GB buffer pool. Every import finished, and the row count we checked on one of the ten tables matched the source.

Neither end was Amazon RDS or a DreamHost MySQL VPS, so treat the times as a rough guide to scale. We didn't time the network copy. Sysbench fills tables with random text that barely compresses, so a real app's gzipped dump is likely to be smaller.

Which way to go

Amazon RDS cost FAQs