Oracle on EC2 vs RDS: The same BYOL licensing rules, but different operational responsibilities, administrative privileges, and infrastructure constraints.
Oracle on EC2 vs RDS: Why the License Math Doesn’t Save You
Oracle counts a vCPU the same way on EC2 and on RDS, so the platform choice never saves you licensing money. What it does change is sysdba access, block size and file limits, who owns backups and failover, and the Multi-AZ setting that quietly doubles your BYOL count.