Comparison · vs AWS Performance Insights
RDS Performance Insights — plus le multi-cloud, la flotte, les alertes.
PI est bon pour une instance RDS isolée. Obsfly vous donne une vue par flotte, alerting unifié, prévisions et couverture hors RDS.
01. Why teams move
What teams say in the first call.
- AWS-only — RDS, Aurora. No GCP Cloud SQL, Azure Database, on-prem, or other clouds.
- Postgres + MySQL + MariaDB + Oracle + SQL Server — but only the RDS-flavored versions.
- 7-day retention free; longer is paid and capped.
- No cross-DB unified view — each instance is a separate dashboard.
- No real anomaly detection or forecasting — top-N counters only.
- No alerts on slow queries directly; you wire CloudWatch alarms separately.
02. Honest take
What AWS Performance Insights is genuinely good at.
We’re not interested in trash-talk. Here’s where AWS Performance Insights is the right call — useful even if you end up choosing Obsfly, because keeping AWS Performance Insights for some workloads can make sense.
- + Free for AWS-hosted databases (basic tier, 7-day retention).
- + Zero-install: built into RDS, no agent to deploy.
- + Wait-event analysis is well-implemented, especially for Postgres and Oracle.
- + Tightly integrated with CloudWatch for alerting.
03. Side by side
Obsfly vs AWS Performance Insights, line by line.
04. The math
Pricing snapshot.
Public list pricing where known; “contact sales” where not. Real bills are usually within 20% of these figures.
05. Switching
How teams actually switch.
Run alongside Performance Insights
PI is read-only and doesn't conflict with anything. Keep it on for the AWS-native console and pair Obsfly for the cross-cloud view.
Same wait-event taxonomy
We use the same wait-class names PI shows. Operators don't relearn.
Multi-cloud arrives
When the GCP / Azure migration starts, you don't change tools. New regions and DBs just appear in the same UI.
06. FAQ
Common questions.
Performance Insights is free. Why pay for Obsfly?+
PI is free at the basic tier for AWS-hosted databases only, with 7-day retention. The moment you need longer retention, multi-cloud, anomaly detection, or unified alerts, you're paying for AWS PI plus engineering time. Obsfly replaces all of that with one bill.
Does Obsfly work with Aurora Serverless?+
Yes. Same libpq / MySQL protocol; works with all Aurora variants.
What about IAM-only auth on RDS?+
Supported. The agent acquires short-lived RDS auth tokens via IAM and rotates automatically.
Where it shows up
Obsfly for the databases you run.
People also compare
Other tools teams evaluate alongside AWS Performance Insights.
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Obsfly vs pganalyze
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vs Datadog DBM
Obsfly vs Datadog DBM
The Datadog DBM alternative for teams that watched the bill triple. Same data model, more databases, AI-native anomaly detection, BYOC and Sovereign deployment, ~1/3 the price.
vs New Relic
Obsfly vs New Relic
New Relic's database visibility is part of its broader APM. Obsfly is purpose-built for databases — query digests, plan history, lock chains, AI insights — at flat per-DB pricing without ingest surprises.
Deep dives
Reading you might want before the call.
Postgres
pg_stat_statements: the complete 2026 guide
Every column, every gotcha, the queries you should run today, and why pg_stat_statements is still the most useful 80 lines of telemetry in Postgres — even with five new alternatives in 2026.
Pricing
We added up Datadog DBM at 50 databases. Here's the bill.
A line-by-line walkthrough of what 50 Postgres + 12 MySQL + 8 Mongo databases actually cost on Datadog DBM in 2026, with ways to reduce it that don't involve switching tools.
AI
Anomaly detection on database metrics: why thresholds fail and what works
A walk through forecast bands, change-point detection, multi-variate anomaly, and the seasonality math that makes 'p99 over 200ms' the wrong alert by default — with the Postgres example that broke our last threshold.
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See it on your stack.
20-min comparison demo. Bring real queries from your AWS Performance Insights setup; we'll reproduce them in Obsfly live.