Aurora PostgreSQL 16.15 / 17.11 / 18.6: idle connections use 2× memory, and new connections use 3× CPU
This is a report of isolated tests on new, empty Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL clusters, run on 2026-10-22 in eu-west-1.
The engine release of 2026-09-29 (16.15, 17.11, 18.6) changes the cost of each client connection compared with the previous minor versions:
- Memory: each idle connection costs about 3.5–4 MiB more.
- The memory is allocated when the backend starts and stays in use until the backend exits.