Top 5 AWS migration tools: A guide for 2025

With 2.38 million businesses now running on Amazon Web Services—commanding a 50.1% market share among top cloud providers—the platform's dominance is clear. But this shift to AWS brings complex technical challenges that many engineering teams underestimate.

Before diving into tools, let's acknowledge the real technical hurdles. Microservices, databases, caches, and queues create intricate webs of dependencies that must be carefully mapped and maintained during migration. Moving terabytes of production data can risk data consistency and result in corrupting state or losing transactions. There are also performance concerns to make sure you avoid latency spikes and maintain SLAs during the transition, while managing different runtime versions, library conflicts, and configuration disparities. 

These challenges often stem from insufficient tooling and no system in place. Too often teams treat migration as a one-time lift-and-shift operation rather than an ongoing engineering initiative and opportunity to improve engineering excellence. They might not track dependencies and ownership, or forget security and compliance requirements until late in the process. 

That’s where AWS migration tools come in. 

How do AWS migration tools work?

AWS migration tools address these challenges and take a modernization approach to moving your workloads. Here's a breakdown of their core functionalities:

Assessment and planning

Migration tools start by creating a detailed topology of your current infrastructure. They map service dependencies using static analysis and runtime tracking, identify potential bottlenecks and compatibility issues, and calculate resource requirements and estimated AWS costs. Then they generate a detailed migration strategy based on workload patterns. 

Replication and synchronization

During the actual migration, these tools handle the replication of data with minimal performance impact and continuous data synchronization to reduce cutover time. They also deal with network interruptions, change tracking, and conflict resolution. 

Data and application transfer

Migration tools automate complex workload transitions through automated schema conversion, environment configuration translation, container orchestration, and secure credentials management.

Post-migration optimization

After the initial migration, tools help you benchmark against pre-migration performance, optimize resource utilization, and run cost analysis and recommendations. 

Monitoring and issue resolution

Comprehensive monitoring provides real-time visibility into migration progress with automated error detection, performance tracking, and detailed audit logging for compliance and troubleshooting.

Types of AWS migration tools

There are a few different types of tools that are well-suited for various migration scenarios, from moving petabyte-scale databases to orchestrating complex containerized apps.

Data migration tools

Tools focused on moving databases, file systems, and other data stores. They handle large-scale data transfers with minimal downtime, manage schema conversions and data type mappings, and provide rollback capabilities and point-in-time recovery.

Application migration tools

Specialized in moving application code and configurations, these tools focus on container orchestration and service mesh migration, configuration management and environment parity, and API gateway and routing updates. 

Server migration tools

Tools for moving VM workloads and bare metal servers are called server migration tools. They work well for P2V (Physical to Virtual) conversion, VM format conversion and optimization, boot configuration and driver management, and server state and configuration replication.

Storage migration tools

Focused on moving different types of storage systems, storage migration tools help with migration of block storage, object storage, and file systems. They also support replication and preservation. 

Hybrid and multi-cloud management

The tools manage complex migration scenarios, as per the name. They specialize in cross-cloud networking and connectivity, identity and access management synchronization, and multi-region deployment and failover.

Secrets and security management

These tools ensure secure migration of sensitive data, including credential rotation and secure transfer, compliance validation and reporting, and certificate management and SSL/TLS configuration. 

Must-have features for AWS migration tools

When evaluating migration tools, look beyond basic functionality. 

• Automated assessment: Automated infrastructure discovery, dependency mapping, and resource analysis that provides clear AWS sizing recommendations and cost projections

• Real-time data replication: Sub-second latency monitoring with automatic retry mechanisms for failed transfers

• Integrated security and compliance checks: Automated security group configuration and validate compliance against frameworks like SOC 2 and HIPAA

• Robust monitoring and alerting: Real-time dashboards with granular error logging and customizable alerts

• Flexible rollback capabilities: Point-in-time recovery and partial component rollbacks

• Ownership and service mapping: Clear ownership through service dependency visualization and team tracking

• Self-service access: Role-based controls and API-first architecture with CI/CD integration

• Customizable reporting: Detailed insights into migration progress, resource utilization, and compliance status through customizable dashboards and automated reporting tools

Top 5 AWS cloud migration tools

Let's dissect the major tools in the space, including native AWS cloud-based solutions and moving to third-party options:

Cortex

Key features:

• Service catalog with automated dependency mapping

• Real-time architecture visualization

• GitOps-based configuration management

• Automated security and compliance validation

• Custom scorecards for service health

• Self-service developer portal

Pros:

• Deep integration with engineering workflows

• Comprehensive dependency tracking

• Strong compliance automation

• Excellent developer experience

• Scalable to large microservices architectures

Cons:

• More complex setup for small teams

• Requires Git-based workflow adoption

• Higher initial investment

Best for: Use cases with complex microservices architectures who need robust service management and compliance tracking during and after migration

Pricing: Custom pricing based on organization size with enterprise features available

AWS Migration Hub

Key features:

• Centralized migration tracking

• Application discovery and dependency mapping

• Migration pattern recommendations

• Integration with other AWS migration tools

Pros:

• Native AWS integration

• Comprehensive migration tracking

• Good for large-scale migrations

• Built-in best practices

Cons:

• Limited support for non-AWS sources

• Basic automation capabilities

• Learning curve for complex scenarios

• Limited customization options

Best for: Enterprise teams migrating primarily from on-premise to AWS

Pricing: Free for tracking migrations, and you must pay for associated services used

AWS Database Migration Service (DMS)

Key features:

• Continuous data replication

• Schema conversion

• Multiple database engine support

• Zero-downtime migration

Pros:

• Reliable for database migrations

• Extensive source/target support

• Built-in monitoring

• Strong security features

Cons:

• Complex setup for some scenarios

• Limited to database migrations

• Performance overhead for some configurations

• Schema conversion limitations

Best for: Teams migrating databases with minimal downtime requirements

Pricing: Pay-per-use based on compute resources, with additional charges for data transfer. The free tier is available for 750 hours. 

CloudEndure Migration

Key features:

• Block-level replication

• Automated machine conversion

• Large-scale migration support

• Minimal downtime

Pros:

• Excellent for large-scale server migrations

• Strong automation capabilities

• Good performance

• Simple licensing model

Cons:

• Limited application-level features

• Basic dependency mapping

• Focused mainly on lift-and-shift

• Limited customization

Best for: Teams performing large-scale server migrations

Pricing: Free for 90 days per machine, and enterprise pricing is available for longer terms.

RiverMeadow Cloud Migration

Key features:

• Multi-cloud support

• Automated discovery

• Pre-flight testing

• Custom scripting support

Pros:

• Flexible migration options

• Strong automation

• Good multi-cloud support

• Detailed analytics

Cons:

• Higher cost for small migrations

• Complex setup process

• Limited native AWS integration

• Steeper learning curve

Best for: Teams with multi-cloud or hybrid-cloud environments

Pricing: Custom pricing based on scale with annual licensing options

How to choose the right AWS migration tool

Selecting migration tools requires balancing technical requirements, team capabilities, and business constraints. Here's a systematic approach to evaluation:

Define specific migration goals

Start by quantifying technical requirements including data volumes, velocity needs, maximum acceptable downtime, required migration speeds (MB/s, GB/hour), and recovery objectives (RPO/RTO). These metrics will serve as your baseline success criteria and help narrow down appropriate tooling options.

Assess compatibility with existing workflows

Evaluate how potential migration tools integrate with your current CI/CD pipelines, monitoring stack, Infrastructure as Code practices, authentication systems, and automation frameworks to ensure seamless adoption and minimal disruption to existing processes.

Evaluate scalability and gaps

Look at each tool's capability to handle your projected data volumes, support concurrent migrations, manage resource overhead, and handle complex dependencies while ensuring support for any custom protocols or formats your systems require.

Review security and compliance requirements

Document comprehensive security requirements spanning encryption needs (both in-transit and at-rest), compliance framework compatibility, audit logging capabilities, network security controls, and granular access management features.

Test with a pilot migration

Validate your chosen solution through a proof-of-concept migration using a non-critical workload, measuring success rates, data consistency, performance impact, resource utilization, and team workflow disruption against your established baselines.

Plan for engineering excellence

Establish clear ownership mapping, team responsibilities, and escalation paths, while implementing robust monitoring, rollback procedures, and performance baselines. Ensure comprehensive security through access control policies, secret management, and compliance monitoring. To prioritize engineering excellence, foster strong developer experience through self-service capabilities and clear documentation.

Making cloud migration manageable

Successful AWS migration extends beyond basic workload movement, with clear service ownership, robust reliability practices, comprehensive security measures, and empowering developers through self-service tools and automation. Traditional migration tools often focus solely on technical workload movement, leading to ownership ambiguity and compliance gaps. On the other hand, good migration tools can maintain clear service ownership, track dependencies accurately, ensure compliance adherence, and standardize processes throughout your migration journey.

An internal developer portal like Cortex can help with many of these challenges of AWS migrations:

• Centralized service and ownership mapping: The service catalog makes it easy to assign responsibilities and track service dependencies, which is crucial for managing large-scale migrations with many interconnected components.

• Automated scorecards and compliance tracking: Cortex continuously monitors alignment with security, compliance, and operational standards and validates that all cloud services meet predefined standards before, during, and after migration.

• Developer self-service tools: Tools like Scaffolder and Actions can independently initiate and complete tasks (like API calls or resource provisioning) and reduce migration bottlenecks.

• Integrated monitoring: Cortex provides real-time insights and health assessments and alerts teams to any issues in service performance or compliance status throughout the migration process.

• Customizable reporting: Detailed, exportable insights on migration progress, resource allocation, and adherence to standards allow teams to document success metrics and identify areas for improvement.

To see how Cortex can help your AWS migration, schedule a demo with our team.