Comparison
PgBeam vs AWS RDS Proxy
RDS Proxy pools connections to RDS and Aurora inside your VPC. PgBeam adds wire-level policy, PII masking, and a full audit trail for agent access, and works with any Postgres host, not just RDS.
AWS RDS Proxy: AWS RDS Proxy is a fully managed connection pooler for RDS and Aurora, bound to your VPC.
RDS Proxy and PgBeam both pool Postgres connections. The difference is scope. RDS Proxy is a pooler for AWS-hosted Postgres inside your VPC. PgBeam is a policy and audit layer for agent access that also pools and caches, and it works with any Postgres host, not just RDS and Aurora.
PgBeam vs AWS RDS Proxy, side by side
| Capability | PgBeam | AWS RDS Proxy |
|---|---|---|
| Agent policy (read-only, allowlists, budgets) | Yes, at the wire | No |
| PII masking | Yes | No |
| Per-statement audit trail | Yes | No |
| Hosted MCP endpoint | Yes | No |
| Connection pooling | Yes | Yes |
| Query caching | Yes (TTL + SWR) | No |
| Prepared statements | Full | Causes pinning |
| Any database host | Yes | RDS / Aurora only |
| Any cloud | Yes | AWS only |
Built for agents, not just pooling
RDS Proxy gives you a pool and IAM authentication. It has no concept of what a query is allowed to do. PgBeam parses every statement and enforces a policy: read-only, table and column allowlists, query budgets, and a kill-switch, before the query reaches your database.
For agent access that means a hallucinated UPDATE or an off-limits SELECT is blocked at the wire with an LLM-readable reason, and sensitive columns are masked before results leave the proxy. RDS Proxy does none of this; it forwards the query.
Any host, plus caching
RDS Proxy only works with RDS and Aurora, and only inside your VPC. PgBeam works with RDS, Aurora, self-hosted, or any managed Postgres, because enforcement is in the wire protocol rather than a cloud-specific service.
PgBeam also caches repeated read queries with TTL and stale-while-revalidate, which matters for agents that re-ask the same question. RDS Proxy has no caching, and prepared statements pin connections, which undercuts the pooling benefit.
When AWS RDS Proxy is the better fit
If all of your Postgres is on RDS or Aurora inside one VPC and you only need pooling with IAM auth, RDS Proxy is a native, fully managed fit with no extra hop. PgBeam is the better choice when you need agent guardrails, masking, audit, caching, or support for databases outside AWS.
Questions
Safe Postgres access for your agents
Start with a 14-day free trial. No credit card required.
Technical preview. For internal testing only.
Get Started