Blog · Databases
PostgreSQL 13 on RDS moved to paid Extended Support in March
Standard support for PostgreSQL 13 on Amazon RDS ended on February 28, 2026. Starting the next day, every instance on that version pays an additional Extended Support charge, and the same goes for creating a new one or restoring a snapshot. The database runs the same as before; the bill doesn't.
What changed on March 1
The PostgreSQL community stopped maintaining version 13 in November 2025. AWS kept it under standard support until February 28, 2026, and on March 1 moved it to RDS Extended Support: it still gets critical security patches and bug fixes, but for a separate charge. That support runs until February 28, 2029, and starting March 1, 2028, the third-year rate applies.
The charge is per vCPU per hour, on top of what you already pay for the instance, storage, backups and data transfer. In US East (N. Virginia), it costs $0.100 per vCPU-hour in the first two years and $0.200 in the third. AWS's example: a db.r5.large, with 2 vCPUs, pays $0.200 per hour of Extended Support. Over a 730-hour month, that comes to about $146 per instance, before the third-year increase.
Where the cost shows up
According to AWS's pricing page, the charge applies to every instance in a Multi-AZ deployment, including the standby, and to each read replica. It also applies to any new instance created on that version and to any snapshot restored to an instance. Stored snapshots aren't charged. Reserved Instance discounts don't apply to this charge.
The charge stops when you upgrade the instance to a version under standard support, or when you stop or delete it.
Which version should you move to?
AWS recommended upgrading to PostgreSQL 16 or later. The calendar explains why: standard support for PostgreSQL 14 on RDS ends on February 28, 2027. Upgrading from 13 to 14 buys less than a year; jumping to 16 or 17 pushes the date out to 2029 or 2030.