Azure PostgreSQL led Amazon RDS on OLTP throughput, with no HA penalty, in third-party testing

Principled Technologies found an Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server handled up to 79% more database requests than a comparable Amazon RDS instance.

REDMOND, WA, UNITED STATES, August 13, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- As some organizations move their online transaction processing (OLTP) workloads to managed cloud databases, they must consider both performance and reliability. Principled Technologies (PT) released a report, commissioned by Microsoft, comparing the OLTP performance of Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server against Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL.

PT tested an Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server instance with Dv6-series compute and Premium SSD v2 storage against an Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL instance on comparable hardware, with both instances sized at 16 vCPUs. The comparison used the HammerDB TPROC-C workload, an OLTP benchmark that reports results in new orders per minute (NOPM). Each configuration ran with and without high availability, using a restored 30-minute sustained methodology to standardize warm-cache and burst-credit effects.

On the configurations PT tested, the Azure instance processed more database requests than the Amazon RDS instance in both high availability and non-high availability modes. Key takeaways included:
- Without high availability, the Azure D16s_v6 instance delivered 72 percent more NOPM than the Amazon RDS db.m7i.4xlarge instance.
- With high availability enabled, the Azure advantage grew to 79 percent.
- Enabling high availability on the Azure instance did not reduce its throughput, so redundancy came without a performance penalty.

As the report notes, “A platform that falls short on throughput in production creates bottlenecks that affect user experience, developer productivity, and in transactional environments, revenue…For enterprise IT organizations evaluating cloud platforms for production PostgreSQL workloads, the results demonstrate that Azure flexible server Dv6 infrastructure can handle significantly more database requests at the same instance size—with or without high availability enabled. The ability to add redundancy without a performance penalty makes Azure Database for PostgreSQL – Flexible Server a compelling choice for production environments where HA is a requirement."

To read the full methodology, configurations, and per-iteration results, see the full report from Principled Technologies.

About Principled Technologies, Inc.
Principled Technologies, Inc. is the leading provider of fact-based marketing and competitive analysis backed by transparent methodologies.

Principled Technologies, Inc. is located in Durham, North Carolina, USA. For more information, please visit www.principledtechnologies.com.

Sharon Horton
Principled Technologies, Inc.
press@principledtechnologies.com
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