Amazon Web Services (AWS), a subsidiary of Amazon.com, has announced the general availability of Amazon DocumentDB Serverless, a managed document database service compatible with MongoDB. The new offering aims to help customers manage costs and simplify operations by automatically adjusting capacity based on demand.
According to AWS, serverless databases like Amazon DocumentDB Serverless can reduce costs by up to 90% compared to traditional provisioning for peak capacity. The system monitors database activity and scales up to millions of requests per second as needed. Over the past three years, the number of AWS serverless database customers has more than doubled as organizations seek solutions for unpredictable workloads and a foundation for artificial intelligence agents. Companies such as AccelByte, AppsFlyer, Atlassian, Autodesk, Canva, Elliptic, Genesys, Greenway Health, Intuit, Lyft, Rippling, Samsung, Smartsheet, SmugMug, Snap, Yum Brands, and Zoom are among those using AWS serverless databases.
"AWS has transformed how customers build and scale their applications by making database management effortless with serverless," said G2 Krishnamoorthy, vice president of Databases at AWS. "The rise of agents has put unprecedented demands on databases, magnifying the importance of data as a differentiator for customers. Our serverless databases provide customers with a foundation capable of supporting these more dynamic and unpredictable workloads, so they can seamlessly scale to meet demands, reduce operational costs by always deploying the right amount of capacity, and simplify their operations.”
AWS introduced its first serverless database in 2012 with Amazon DynamoDB. Since then it has expanded its portfolio to include services like Amazon Aurora DSQL for financial transactions and Amazon Neptune Serverless for fraud detection.
Serverless databases are especially suited for agent-based workflows that experience rapid changes in demand. For example, travel companies may see spikes in customer interactions during busy seasons that require immediate scaling without manual intervention.
With Amazon DocumentDB Serverless now available, customers no longer need to manage or provision database capacity for document-based workloads. This is beneficial for use cases such as video game player profiles or e-commerce product catalogs. Software-as-a-service vendors managing multiple customer databases may also benefit from automatic scaling and cost-effective pricing. The service supports MongoDB-compatible APIs along with features like vector search and multi-Availability Zone deployments.
Organizations across various industries have adopted AWS serverless databases to handle evolving workload requirements:
AccelByte’s vice president of Engineering Tony Fu said: “Unpredictable player surges during a game launch or special event create massive scaling challenges. Amazon DocumentDB Serverless is exactly what our team needs to adapt to dramatic shifts in player usage, ensuring we can deliver reliable, cost-effective scaling to meet the needs of our customers and provide a delightful experience to millions of players worldwide. Now we can eliminate capacity planning for our database workloads and allow our engineers to focus on feature development.”
Ruli Weisbach at AppsFlyer commented: "Amazon DynamoDB requires zero infrastructure management, enabling our developers to focus on business problems rather than infrastructure, which aligns with our goal of increasing development efficiency. Its serverless architecture...has transformed our operations. We have reduced database provisioning time from days to minutes...and gained point-in-time recovery that significantly reduces business risk out-of-the-box."
Joey Capper from Elliptic added: “We chose DynamoDB as part of our infrastructure because it allows our engineering team to focus on delivering real-time solutions for our customers rather than managing infrastructure...guaranteeing 99.99% uptime for our customers.”
Rob Gevers at Genesys stated: “Amazon ElastiCache powers high-throughput...storage...enabling millions of customer interactions per day....we get performance without the overhead of provisioning instances...This reduces administrative overhead while giving us a meaningful leap in stability and scalability.”
Philip Nick at Greenway Health said: “Greenway has been a user of multiple AWS serverless solutions including Amazon Aurora Serverless....As we explore Amazon DocumentDB Serverless...we're excited about the potential to further improve operational efficiencies while maintaining our focus on improving patient care outcomes....”
Rajesh Saluja at Intuit explained: "Looking to reduce operational overhead and improve our database costs...we decided to utilize Amazon Aurora Serverless…It has helped us save approximately 55% on our database provisioning costs.”
Albert Strasheim at Rippling said: "Amazon DocumentDB Serverless will help us streamline everything from payroll processing...through automatic scaling that keeps costs low during quieter periods..."
Khang Nguyen at Samsung SmartThings noted: “With ElastiCache Serverless...we no longer worry about cluster scaling and optimizing its costs—it just works.”
Ryan Kennedy at Smartsheet described DynamoDB as “an essential part of our technology stack…Its performance and flexibility have played a crucial role in helping us scale efficiently…”
Don MacAskill at SmugMug added: “With Amazon ElastiCache Serverless…we no longer need to worry about managing the complexities…ElastiCache Serverless enables our developers to get started quickly…without any manual intervention.”
AWS continues expanding its range of cloud services globally with over 240 fully featured offerings spanning compute, storage, analytics machine learning/AI capabilities across numerous regions.
For more information about this announcement visit:
The AWS Blog
The Amazon DocumentDB page
The Amazon DocumentDB Serverless page