AWS Starts Charging for MySQL 8.0 on Saturday. Here's What It Costs.
MySQL 8.0 reached community end of life on April 30, 2026. That date got the coverage. The date that actually costs money is July 31, 2026 — tomorrow — when Amazon RDS for MySQL 8.0 reaches end of standard support.
From August 1, instances still on 8.0 move onto RDS Extended Support and start accruing an additional per-vCPU-hour charge on top of what you already pay. Nothing breaks. No alarm fires. The database keeps serving traffic exactly as it did on Friday. The difference shows up weeks later, in a bill line item, on a resource nobody flagged because it never stopped working.
The dates
Straight from AWS's major-version table for RDS for MySQL:
| Major version | Community EOL | RDS end of standard support | Extended Support yr-3 pricing | RDS end of Extended Support |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MySQL 8.4 | Apr 30, 2029 | Jul 31, 2029 | Aug 1, 2031 | Jul 31, 2032 |
| MySQL 8.0 | Apr 30, 2026 | Jul 31, 2026 | Aug 1, 2028 | Jul 31, 2029 |
| MySQL 5.7 | Oct 31, 2023 | Feb 29, 2024 | Mar 1, 2026 (already there) | Jun 30, 2029 |
Note the shape of it: RDS gives you a three-month grace window past community EOL, then three years of paid runway. If you are on 5.7, you are already past the year-three price step — you have been paying the higher rate since March.
What it costs
RDS Extended Support is billed per vCPU-hour, and AWS is clear that the rate "depends on the MySQL version, AWS Region, and the number of calendar years since standard support expired for that version." The worked example AWS publishes on its own RDS for MySQL pricing page — US East, MySQL 5.7 — is $0.100 per vCPU-hour in years one and two, rising to $0.200 per vCPU-hour in year three.
Applied to a month of 730 hours, at that example rate:
| Instance | vCPUs | Years 1–2, single-AZ | Years 1–2, Multi-AZ | Year 3, Multi-AZ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| db.*.large | 2 | ~$146/mo | ~$292/mo | ~$584/mo |
| db.*.xlarge | 4 | ~$292/mo | ~$584/mo | ~$1,168/mo |
| db.*.4xlarge | 16 | ~$1,168/mo | ~$2,336/mo | ~$4,672/mo |
Illustrative, using AWS's published US East example rate. Confirm your own Region and version on the AWS pricing page before budgeting.
Three multipliers turn this from a rounding error into a real number:
- Multi-AZ counts twice. AWS states plainly that "RDS Extended Support charges apply to standby instances in Multi-AZ deployments." Your production databases are the ones most likely to be Multi-AZ, so the highest surcharge lands on exactly the instances you were most reluctant to touch.
- Year three doubles the rate. The step from $0.100 to $0.200 per vCPU-hour arrives August 1, 2028. It is designed to make procrastination progressively more expensive, and it works.
- It's per instance, and fleets are wide. One forgotten 8.0 dev instance is noise. Forty of them across three accounts is a budget line.
What you actually get for it
AWS defines the coverage precisely, and the precision matters:
- Security updates for critical and high CVEs
- Bug fixes and patches for critical issues
- The ability to open support cases within the standard RDS SLA
Read what is not on that list. Medium and low severity CVEs are not covered. New features are not coming. This is a maintained holding pattern, and AWS describes it as such — it "gives you more time to upgrade to a supported major engine version."
To AWS's credit, the patches are real and they ship: the Extended Support release 8.0.46-RDS.20260624 landed on July 15, 2026 carrying a fix for CVE-2026-46863. That is a genuinely better deal than the usual post-EOL alternative, which is nothing at all. But it is a deal you are paying for, on a clock, to stay where you already are.
The only two ways to stop the meter
AWS lists exactly two actions that end the charge:
- Upgrade to a version under standard support. For MySQL 8.0 that means 8.4 — the only supported major upgrade path AWS offers from 8.0, and an in-place one. That buys you until July 31, 2029.
- Delete the database. Which is the honest answer for a surprising share of long-lived dev and staging instances.
Billing stops the day the upgrade completes, and it is prorated — AWS's own example bills a customer for 30 days of Extended Support when they upgraded a month in. There is no minimum term. An upgrade completed in September is nine-tenths cheaper than one completed the following June.
And if you do neither: Extended Support runs up to three years, and AWS states that after that, if you have not upgraded, "Amazon RDS will automatically upgrade your major engine version" for you. The 8.0 → 8.4 upgrade happens either way. The only variables are whether you choose the date and whether you pay for the delay.
Why this one is worth flagging
Managed-service EOL is invisible in a way installed-software EOL isn't. When an OS or a runtime goes end of life, something eventually stops — a package repo 404s, a build fails, a scanner turns red. When a managed database goes end of standard support, the only signal is a bill you'll read in five weeks. The failure mode isn't an outage, it's a silent charge against a resource that is working perfectly.
The window between "free" and "paid" is where the whole decision lives. Community EOL was April 30. RDS end of standard support is July 31. That three-month gap was the cheap window for an in-place 8.0 → 8.4 upgrade, and it closes tomorrow. After that the same upgrade costs the same engineering effort plus however many months of surcharge you accumulate before doing it.
Cloud lifecycle dates belong in the same inventory as your software versions. Most teams that track end-of-life at all track what they install. The RDS engine version behind your application has a lifecycle exactly like your Node.js version does — it is just enforced through billing rather than through patch availability. We made this same argument about the 20+ AWS services that closed to new customers today; the database layer is the version of it with a price tag attached.
The weekend checklist
- Census your engine versions.
aws rds describe-db-instances --query "DBInstances[?starts_with(EngineVersion, '8.0')].[DBInstanceIdentifier,EngineVersion,MultiAZ]" --output table, per account, per Region. Multi-AZ is in there because it doubles the number. - Check your enrollment status. The RDS console and API expose whether an instance is enrolled in Extended Support. Assume enrolled unless you know someone explicitly disabled it at creation.
- Sort by "delete or upgrade." Dev and staging instances on 8.0 that nobody has queried in a quarter are the cheapest win available this week.
- For everything left, book the 8.4 upgrade. It is in-place and supported. The surcharge is prorated, so the ticket you open in August is materially cheaper than the one you open in November — that is the entire argument for scheduling it now.
- Set the 2028 reminder. If anything is genuinely staying on 8.0, August 1, 2028 doubles its rate. That belongs in a calendar, not in someone's memory.
We track lifecycle deadlines like these across 460+ products — see every RDS for MySQL version and its dates, check any version in seconds, scan your whole stack, or see what else is reaching end of life this half, all against dates verified against vendor sources.
Frequently Asked Questions
When exactly does RDS for MySQL 8.0 support end?
Community end of life was April 30, 2026. Amazon RDS end of standard support for the 8.0 major version is July 31, 2026. Extended Support then runs to July 31, 2029, with year-1 pricing from August 1, 2026 and year-3 pricing from August 1, 2028.
Will I be charged automatically?
By default, yes. AWS enrolls instances automatically after the end of standard support date unless Extended Support was explicitly disabled when the instance was created or restored — and enrollment status can't be changed on an existing instance except through a restore. Charges begin the day after the end of standard support date: August 1, 2026.
How much does it cost?
Per vCPU-hour, varying by version, Region and year. AWS's published US East example is $0.100 per vCPU-hour in years 1–2 and $0.200 in year 3 — roughly $292 a month for a 4-vCPU instance, doubled for Multi-AZ because standby instances are charged too. Confirm your own Region on the AWS pricing page.
How do I stop the charge?
Two options only: upgrade to a version under standard support (8.0 → 8.4, in-place and supported), or delete the database. Billing is prorated and stops the day the upgrade completes.
Does my database stop working on July 31?
No. Nothing breaks. The engine keeps running and keeps receiving critical and high CVE patches under Extended Support. What changes is that it costs more, and that the clock to a forced upgrade in July 2029 has started.
What about RDS for MySQL 5.7?
5.7 has been in Extended Support since February 29, 2024 and moved to year-3 pricing on March 1, 2026 — double the year-1/2 rate. Its Extended Support ends June 30, 2029. If you are still on 5.7, you are paying the highest rate available and the supported path is 5.7 → 8.0 → 8.4.