Canner vs. Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL
RDS is the hyperscale answer to managed Postgres. Canner is the Canadian-owned one that sits next to your app.
Amazon RDS gives you Multi-AZ, read replicas and the whole AWS ecosystem, in a Montreal region. Canner gives you Postgres on every plan, in one Canadian-owned platform with your app, cron and storage, priced flat in CAD. Neither is right for every workload; here is where each one wins.
- Amazon RDS is stronger on high availability (Multi-AZ), read replicas, scale and integration with the rest of AWS. Canner has one region, no multi-zone failover and no read replicas.
- Where Canner differs: Canadian ownership. The Government of Canada’s own white paper says data in the cloud may be subject to the laws of other countries, and that a US-law organization can be compelled regardless of the data’s location. Amazon is US-incorporated; Canner is not.
- On Canner the database, the app, cron jobs and object storage live in one place with flat CAD pricing. On AWS the database is one service among many that you configure, connect and pay for separately, in USD.
| Feature | Canner | Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL |
|---|---|---|
| Data location | Montreal, Quebec — the only region | ca-central-1 (Montreal) is available, among many other AWS regions † |
| Jurisdiction | Canadian-owned, no US affiliate; not subject to the US CLOUD Act | Amazon is a US-incorporated company. The Government of Canada’s own guidance says location does not remove exposure to foreign law: a US-law organization can be compelled “regardless of the data’s location” † |
| Managed Postgres | On every plan, including the free Starter: an isolated database and role per project (one on Starter, several on paid plans), DATABASE_URL injected. Postgres 17 or 18, chosen at creation | Separate service. Free tier for one year: 750 hours single-AZ, 20 GB storage and 20 GB backup † |
| Pricing model | Flat CAD: Starter free, Live CA$9/month, Studio CA$149/month. Storage is one pooled limit per organization (5 / 25 / 100 GB); +50 GB blocks at CA$5/month | Instance hours plus storage plus backup, in USD. ca-central-1 list prices: db.t4g.micro $0.018/hr, db.t4g.small $0.035/hr (single-AZ); gp3 storage $0.127/GB-month; backup storage beyond the free allocation $0.105/GB-month † |
| High availability | None. One region, one provider; no multi-zone failover and no automatic failover | Multi-AZ deployments, which double the instance price † |
| Read replicas | Not offered | Supported; each replica is billed as a standard instance † |
| Backups & point-in-time recovery | Scheduled encrypted backups with the retention you set, manual backups, verification with email alerts, restore into a new database or in place, and copies to up to 5 of your own S3-compatible buckets. Point-in-time recovery (1–35 days, into a new database) with the Dedicated instance add-on, CA$9/month per project | Automated backups kept 0–35 days (7 by default from the console); point-in-time recovery included within that retention; a restore creates a new instance † |
| Extensions | With the Dedicated instance add-on: pgvector, PostGIS, pg_trgm, pg_cron, hstore and others (14 in the catalog). No fdw or dblink | pgvector, pg_cron and PostGIS available, depending on the Postgres version † |
| Logical replication | With the Dedicated instance add-on: replication out to your own subscribers, and following an external server live for a no-downtime migration (never as a superuser). Physical replication is closed | Publisher and subscriber; requires setting rds.logical_replication=1 and a reboot † |
| Moving in and out | Migrate-in streams from any public Postgres server (RDS included); pg_dump export, migrate-out and copy on every plan. `canner db migrate-in` from the CLI | See vendor documentation |
| What sits beside the database | Your app, cron jobs, object storage, scheduled SQL, cookieless analytics and a CLI, REST API and MCP server, in one dashboard | The database only. Compute, networking, IAM, storage and scheduling are separate AWS services you assemble |
| Ecosystem & enterprise fit | A focused platform; Enterprise from CA$600/month by quote | Deep IAM and VPC integration and a very large ecosystem |
† Competitor details come from each vendor's own published pages on the dates shown; prices and plans change, so check the vendor before you decide. Data location (2026-09-26) · Jurisdiction (2026-09-26) · Managed Postgres (2026-09-26) · Pricing model (2026-09-26) · High availability (2026-09-26) · Read replicas (2026-09-26) · Backups & point-in-time recovery (2026-09-26) · Extensions (2026-09-26) · Logical replication (2026-09-26)
When Canner is the right call
You are shipping a Canadian app or internal tool and want the database beside it: one place, one bill in CAD, Postgres on every plan, and no VPC, IAM or instance sizing to work out first. It matters most when your buyer asks about jurisdiction. Amazon is US-incorporated, and the Government of Canada’s own guidance says a Canadian region does not remove that exposure. Canner is Canadian-owned, hosted only in Montreal, and not subject to the US CLOUD Act. You also get backups you can verify and copy to your own buckets, and point-in-time recovery on a dedicated instance for CA$9/month.
When Amazon RDS still makes sense
If you need Multi-AZ failover, read replicas, or a database that scales far beyond one server, RDS is the stronger product and Canner does not try to match it: Canner has a single region, no automatic failover and no read replicas. RDS is also the natural pick when the rest of your estate is already on AWS, when you rely on IAM and VPC integration, or when an enterprise agreement and the breadth of AWS services matter more than jurisdiction. If a Montreal AWS region satisfies your residency requirement and nothing more, RDS is a sound choice.
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