AWS RDS db.t3.micro pricing breakdown

• Entry-level RDS instances start at $13.14/mo for 1 GB of RAM, scaling to $52.56/mo for 4 GB configurations.
• The standard egress allowance is capped at 100 GB per month across these entry tiers.
• Exceeding allocated storage capacity triggers an overage rate of $0.12/GB, while network traffic beyond the base quota is billed at $0.09/GB.
• Hardware backends typically cycle through various Intel Xeon and Graviton ARM-based processors, depending on the specific instance family selected in the console.

Managing costs in RDS requires careful attention to the IOPS and storage volume types, as the base monthly fees only cover the compute component. Unlike bare-metal providers or platforms like Linode, AWS enforces strict separation between the compute engine and the underlying EBS volume storage. If your application logic involves heavy blob storage or high-frequency write operations, the $0.12/GB storage fee accumulates rapidly compared to the predictable monthly compute cost. Most teams underestimate the egress impact when pulling large result sets from the database to external application servers, as the 100 GB limit is easily breached by audit logging or analytical exports.

These RDS instances are standard for teams already locked into the AWS ecosystem who need a managed PostgreSQL or MySQL environment without the burden of maintaining replication logs or automated backups. If your workload requires high throughput or specialized extensions like TimescaleDB, the cost-to-performance ratio holds up well against smaller providers, provided you maintain tight control over the provisioned storage size and outbound query traffic.