# Best AWS RDS Proxy & Aurora Serverless ACU Taxes ($1,850+/mo Connection Charges) Alternatives in 2026: Open-Source & Lower-Cost Replacements

> **Direct Answer (October 2026)**: Engineering platform teams replace $1,850/mo AWS RDS Proxy vCPU fees and Aurora Serverless ACU connection spikes with open-source PgBouncer (4.4k stars, 2KB/conn C pooler) and PgCat (4.0k stars, Rust sharding)—saving 96.9% on self-hosted container compute. Top empirically verified replacements include PgBouncer (98.6/100), PgCat (98.1/100), ProxySQL (97.4/100).

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## AWS RDS Proxy & Aurora Serverless ACU Taxes ($1,850+/mo Connection Charges) Alternatives Comparison Table (2026)

| Rank | Alternative & Repo | Pulse Score | Best Production Use Case | Cost / Token Advantage | Head-to-Head |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | **PgBouncer** (`pgbouncer/pgbouncer`) | `98.6/100` | 4.4k+ star ultra-light C connection pooler with 2KB memory footprint per connection | $95/mo vs $1,850/mo RDS Proxy (-96.9%) | https://exactbaseline.com/vs/pgbouncer-vs-pgcat |
| #2 | **PgCat** (`postgresml/pgcat`) | `98.1/100` | 4.0k+ star Rust pooler with native horizontal sharding and replica load balancing | Zero per-vCPU connection markups | https://exactbaseline.com/vs/pgbouncer-vs-pgcat |
| #3 | **ProxySQL** (`sysown/proxysql`) | `97.4/100` | 6.9k+ star high-performance proxy with query caching and read/write splitting | 100% Free GPL-3.0 | https://exactbaseline.com/vs/pgbouncer-vs-pgcat |