What is DigitalOcean pricing and how does billing work?
💡 Answer
DigitalOcean offers cloud GPU instances starting at $0.76/hr. Billing is calculated on a Per-second basis, which means you only pay for the exact compute time you use rather than rounding up to full hourly increments.
Spot/preemptible instances: 0
Reserved instance discounts:
DigitalOcean supports the following payment methods: Credit/Debit Cards, PayPal, Google Pay, Apple Pay, ACH, Wire Transfer.
For live pricing across all GPU models and current availability, see DigitalOcean official website.
More FAQs about DigitalOcean
- What is DigitalOcean best for?
- What is the current Trustpilot rating and number of reviews for DigitalOcean?
- What machine learning frameworks does DigitalOcean support?
- How fast can I deploy a GPU instance on DigitalOcean?
- Does DigitalOcean offer serverless GPU inference?
- Where are DigitalOcean data centers located?
- Does DigitalOcean support multi-GPU instances with NVLink or InfiniBand?
- Does DigitalOcean offer spot or preemptible GPU instances?
- Does DigitalOcean charge egress or data transfer fees?
- Does DigitalOcean offer free credits or a free trial?
- What GPU models does DigitalOcean offer?
Guides Where DigitalOcean Is Featured
- Best Cloud GPU Providers with NVIDIA A40
- Best Cloud GPUs for Research & Experimentation
- Cheapest Cloud GPUs Under $0.50/hr
- Cloud GPU Providers with API & CLI Management
- Cloud GPU Providers with Docker & Custom Images
- Cloud GPU Providers with Free Credits
- Cloud GPU Providers with Jupyter Notebook Support
- Cloud GPU Providers with Kubernetes Support
- Cloud GPU Providers with Multi-Node GPU Clusters
- Cloud GPU Providers with NVLink or InfiniBand
- Cloud GPU Providers with Per-Second Billing
- Cloud GPU Providers with Persistent Storage
- Cloud GPU Providers with Serverless GPU Inference
- Cloud GPU Providers with Spot / Preemptible Instances
- Cloud GPU Providers with SSH Access
- Cloud GPU Providers with Zero Egress Fees
These guides include DigitalOcean alongside other cloud GPU providers, grouped by hardware, pricing, features, and infrastructure.
DigitalOcean vs Vultr vs Vast.ai - GPU Provider Comparison (April 2026)
Side-by-side comparison of DigitalOcean vs Vultr vs Vast.ai. Quickly scan maximum funding, profit splits, risk rules, leverage, platforms, instruments, payout schedules, payment options, trading permissions and KYC restrictions to narrow down your prop trading firm shortlist. Data updated April 2026.
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DigitalOcean
Simple, scalable GPU cloud for AI/ML
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Vultr
High-performance cloud GPU across 32 global regions
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Vast.ai
Instant GPUs. Transparent Pricing.
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|---|---|---|---|
| Overview | |||
| Trustpilot Rating | 4.6 | 1.8 | 4.4 |
| Headquarters | United States | United States | United States |
| Provider Type | N/A | Multi-Cloud | GPU Marketplace |
| Best For | AI training inference fine-tuning LLM deployment LLM serving computer vision startups generative AI research | AI training inference video rendering HPC Stable Diffusion game development generative AI fine-tuning research | AI training inference fine-tuning Stable Diffusion batch processing research LLM serving generative AI |
| GPU Hardware | |||
| GPU Models | RTX 4000 Ada RTX 6000 Ada L40S MI300X H100 SXM H200 | A16 A40 L40S A100 PCIe GH200 A100 SXM H100 SXM B200 B300 MI300X MI325X MI355X | B200 H200 H100 SXM H100 NVL A100 SXM A100 PCIe RTX 5090 RTX 5080 RTX 5070 Ti RTX 6000 Pro RTX 6000 Ada RTX 4500 Ada RTX A6000 RTX A5000 RTX A4000 L40S L40 A40 A10 RTX 4090 RTX 4080 RTX 4070 Ti RTX 4070 RTX 4060 Ti RTX 4060 RTX 3090 Ti RTX 3090 RTX 3080 Ti RTX 3080 RTX 3070 Ti RTX 3070 Tesla V100 Tesla T4 A2 GTX 1080 |
| Max VRAM (GB) | 192 | 288 | 192 |
| Max GPUs/Instance | 8 | 16 | 8 |
| Interconnect | NVLink | NVLink | NVLink, InfiniBand |
| Pricing | |||
| Starting Price ($/hr) | $0.76/hr | $0.47/hr | $0.06/hr |
| Billing Granularity | Per-second | Per-hour | Per-second |
| Spot/Preemptible | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Reserved Discounts | N/A | N/A | Up to 50% (1-6 month reserved) |
| Free Credits | $200 free credit for 60 days | Up to $300 free credit for 30 days | Small test credit on signup |
| Egress Fees | None (included in plan) | Standard (varies by plan) | Varies by host ($/TB) |
| Storage | 500-720 GiB NVMe boot (included), 5 TiB NVMe scratch on larger configs, Volumes at $0.10/GiB/mo | 350 GB - 61 TB NVMe (included), Block Storage at $0.10/GB/mo, S3-compatible Object Storage | Varies by host ($/GB/hr, charged while instance exists) |
| Infrastructure | |||
| Regions | New York (NYC2), Toronto (TOR1), Atlanta (ATL1), Richmond (RIC1), Amsterdam (AMS3) | 32 regions across 6 continents (Americas, Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa) | 500+ locations, 40+ data centers |
| Uptime SLA | 99% | 100% | No formal SLA (host reliability scores visible) |
| Developer Experience | |||
| Frameworks | PyTorch TensorFlow Jupyter Miniconda CUDA ROCm Hugging Face | PyTorch TensorFlow CUDA cuDNN ROCm Hugging Face NVIDIA NGC | PyTorch TensorFlow CUDA vLLM ComfyUI |
| Docker Support | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| SSH Access | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Jupyter Notebooks | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| API / CLI | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Setup Time | Minutes | Minutes | Seconds |
| Kubernetes Support | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Business Terms | |||
| Min Commitment | None | None | None |
| Compliance | SOC 2 Type II SOC 3 HIPAA (with BAA) CSA STAR Level 1 | SOC 2+ (HIPAA) PCI ISO 27001 ISO 27017 ISO 27018 ISO 20000-1 CSA STAR Level 1 | SOC 2 Type 2 HIPAA GDPR CCPA |
DigitalOcean
Vultr
Vast.ai