Announcing Extended Support for Amazon DocumentDB (with MongoDB compatibility) version 3.6

Today, Amazon DocumentDB (with MongoDB compatibility) announced that Amazon DocumentDB version 3.6 will reach end of life on March 30, 2026. Starting March 31, 2026, you can continue to run Amazon DocumentDB version 3.6 on Extended Support. Extended Support provides fixes for critical security issues and bugs through patch releases for three years beyond the end of standard support of Amazon DocumentDB version 3.6. You can maintain secure and stable workloads while having additional time to plan, validate application compatibility, mitigate risks, and execute your upgrades.

We recommend testing and upgrading your workloads running on Amazon DocumentDB version 3.6 to version 5.0. At the time of writing, there are no plans for end of life of Amazon DocumentDB versions 4.0 or 5.0. If we announce end of standard support for any version, we will follow AWS guidelines to provide advance notice to give you adequate time to plan your upgrades. Customers who do not upgrade by March 30, 2026, can use Extended Support until March 30, 2029. Any Amazon DocumentDB version 3.6 clusters not upgraded to a later version by March 31, 2026, will incur Extended Support charges as detailed on the Amazon DocumentDB pricing page.

In this post, we discuss what Amazon DocumentDB Extended Support entails, its key benefits, and the upgrade options available.

Key dates for Amazon DocumentDB Extended Support

Amazon DocumentDB version 3.6 has the following end of standard support date and Extended Support dates:

• Release of version 3.6 – January 9, 2019
• End of version 3.6 standard support – March 30, 2026
• Start of version 3.6 Extended Support year 1 pricing – March 31, 2026
• Start of version 3.6 Extended Support year 3 pricing – March 31, 2028
• End of version 3.6 Extended Support – March 30, 2029

Extended Support detailed pricing information is available on the Amazon DocumentDB pricing page. After the Extended Support period ends on March 30, 2029, any remaining clusters still running Amazon DocumentDB version 3.6 will be upgraded to the latest version of Amazon DocumentDB for continued service.

Key benefits of upgrading to Amazon DocumentDB version 5.0

Amazon DocumentDB version 5.0 introduces several new improvements over Amazon DocumentDB version 3.6:

• Increased storage – Up to 128 TiB for both instance-based and elastic clusters
• Enhanced security – Client-side Field Level Encryption (FLE)
• Serverless – Automatic scaling of compute and memory based on your application’s demand
• API compatibility – MongoDB 5.0 API driver compatibility, $elemMatch, and datetime operators
• ACID transactions – Support across multiple documents and databases
• Improved change streams – Extended 7-day retention period and cluster-level operations

To learn more about these benefits, refer to Differences between Amazon DocumentDB 3.6/4.0 to 5.0 upgraded clusters and new Amazon DocumentDB 5.0 clusters.

Upgrade options from Amazon DocumentDB version 3.6 to version 5.0

Amazon DocumentDB currently offers three mechanisms for upgrading from Amazon DocumentDB version 3.6 to Amazon DocumentDB version 5.0. The appropriate method for your use case will depend on your workload and the impact of downtime.

• In-place major version upgrade (MVU) – With in-place MVU, you can perform an in-place upgrade of your Amazon DocumentDB cluster without needing to migrate data or change the endpoints. Your Amazon DocumentDB clusters will be unavailable during the in-place MVU and your clusters will experience multiple reboots. The duration of the downtime depends on the number of databases, collections, and indexes. We recommend creating a clone of your production database and performing a test MVU to estimate the actual downtime for your specific workload. For more information, refer to Amazon DocumentDB in-place major version upgrade.
• AWS DMS – You can use AWS Database Migration Service (AWS DMS) to migrate data and indexes from your existing clusters to a new Amazon DocumentDB 5.0 cluster. AWS DMS is a managed service that you can use to migrate existing data across supported sources and targets. This option minimizes the downtime of the overall upgrade processes. For more information, see Upgrading your Amazon DocumentDB cluster using AWS Database Migration Service.
• mongodump and mongorestore – You can use command line utilities such as mongodump and mongorestore to create a binary backup of your Amazon DocumentDB databases and restore them to a new Amazon DocumentDB 5.0 cluster. This approach might take your application offline during the upgrade process and is best suited workloads that can sustain downtime.

AWS recommends that you take backup snapshots prior to the upgrade process and testing application behavior in a staging environment. Refer to Upgrade Amazon DocumentDB 3.6 to 5.0 with near-zero downtime for more information.

Next steps

Amazon DocumentDB version 3.6 Extended Support is designed to give customers additional time and flexibility to complete their upgrade journey. We encourage you to begin planning your upgrade well ahead of the Amazon DocumentDB version 3.6 end of standard support date on March 30, 2026. Upgrading to the latest Amazon DocumentDB version 5.0 provides improved scalability, security, performance, and functionality.

You might begin by reviewing your current Amazon DocumentDB engine versions, identifying dependencies that might affect upgrade timelines, and testing newer versions in staging environments. Customers who do not complete upgrades of their Amazon DocumentDB version 3.6 clusters by the end of standard support will be subject to increased charges for Extended Support starting March 31, 2026. Pricing will be based on version and duration in Extended Support, as outlined on the Amazon DocumentDB pricing page.

For additional guidance, refer to Extended Support documentation.

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