Comparison — from the record, read 2026-09-06
DigitalOcean vs Vultr
Both ladders below were read from the vendors’ own pricing pages, in this market, on the dates shown. Nothing is converted: what you see is what each page showed a reader here.
What each one is
DigitalOceansite ↗pricing ↗
Cloud infrastructure aimed at developers and small teams, priced simply against the larger clouds. Paid plans start at $4/mo (Droplets); a free plan exists. The ladder we hold runs 7 paid tiers, topping out at $15/mo (Managed Databases).
Vultrsite ↗pricing ↗
Cloud compute and storage sold in many regions, aimed at developers who want per-hour pricing. Paid plans start at $2.5/mo (Cloud Compute, Regular Performance — 1 vCPU / 0.5 GB (IPv6 only)); a free plan exists. The ladder we hold runs 7 paid tiers, topping out at $160/mo (Managed Databases — Memory Optimized, 16 GB / 2 vCPUs).
The two ladders
DigitalOceansite ↗pricing ↗
read 2026-09-06 · USD
| Plan | Price | What the page says |
|---|---|---|
| Droplets | $4/mo | 'Starting at $4 /month'. Per-second billing with a 60-second minimum, 'or $0.01, whichever is higher'. |
| Kubernetes | $12/mo | 'Starting at $12 /month'. Managed Kubernetes. |
| App Platform | Free | 'Starting at $0 /month'. Fully-managed infrastructure. |
| Functions | Free | 'Starting at $0 /month'. Serverless computing. |
| Managed Databases | $15/mo | 'Starting at $15 /month'. |
| Cloudways Managed Hosting | $11/mo | 'Starting at $11 /month'. |
| Spaces (object storage) | $5/mo | 'Starting at $5 /month'. |
| Volumes (block storage) | $10/mo | 'Starting at $10 /month'. |
| Network File Storage | Custom | 'Starting at $0.15 /per GiB/month'. |
| Load Balancers | $12/mo | 'Starting at $12 /month'. |
| Container Registry | Free | 'Starting at $0 /month'. |
| Virtual Private Cloud | Free | 'Starting at $0 /month'. |
| Uptime monitoring | Free | 'Starting at $0 /month'. |
| Support Plans | Free | 'Starting at $0 /month'. Unlimited tickets on the free tier. |
| GPU Droplets | Custom | 'Starting at $1.91 /GPU/hour* — based on multi-month contractual commitment. On-demand pricing from $0.76 /GPU/hour.' |
| AI/ML Inference | Custom | 'Starting at $0.05 /M tokens'. |
Vultrsite ↗pricing ↗
read 2026-09-06 · USD
| Plan | Price | What the page says |
|---|---|---|
| Cloud Compute, Regular Performance — 1 vCPU / 0.5 GB (IPv6 only) | $2.5/mo | '$2.50 /mo $0.004 /hr'. 0.50 TB bandwidth, 10 GB storage, IPv6 only. |
| Cloud Compute, Regular Performance — 1 vCPU / 0.5 GB | $3.5/mo | '$3.50 /mo $0.005 /hr'. 0.50 TB bandwidth, 10 GB storage. |
| Cloud Compute, Regular Performance — 1 vCPU / 1 GB | $5/mo | '$5.00 /mo $0.007 /hr'. 1.00 TB bandwidth, 25 GB storage. |
| Cloud Compute, Regular Performance — 2 vCPUs / 4 GB | $20/mo | '$20.00 /mo $0.03 /hr'. 3.00 TB bandwidth, 80 GB storage. |
| Cloud Compute, Regular Performance — 4 vCPUs / 8 GB | $40/mo | '$40.00 /mo $0.06 /hr'. 4.00 TB bandwidth, 160 GB storage. |
| Object Storage — Standard, 1 TB | $18/mo | '$18.00 /mo' for 1 TB storage and 1 TB bandwidth on the Standard performance tier. |
| Vultr Storage Gateway — Standalone | Free | 'Free'. The highly available gateway is '$20.00 /mo'. |
| Managed Databases — Memory Optimized, 16 GB / 2 vCPUs | $160/mo | '$160 /mo' with 0 replica nodes. |
| Kubernetes Engine control plane | Free | The page states the control plane is provided free of charge. |
Where they differ
- Cheapest way in: Vultr at $2.5/mo, against DigitalOcean at $4/mo. That is the entry price in this market on the dates shown, not a judgement about which suits you.
- Free plans: both publish one — a plan priced at zero, not a trial. What each caps differs.
- How far each ladder goes: DigitalOcean tops out at $15/mo, Vultr at $160/mo. A deeper ladder is not a worse deal — it is a bill that keeps climbing if you keep growing.
How to choose in this category
- Match the tier to the sites and storage you actually use — the levels here divide on resources, not features.
- Introductory terms in this set run one to four years; a lower monthly figure often buys a longer lock-in.
- Every row links the host’s own pricing page. Open it and read the renewal line before you commit to a term.
Both ladders were read from the vendors’ own pricing pages as shown to a United States reader, on the dates beside each table. Nothing here is converted from another market and nothing is ordered by commission. Some links are affiliate links; they earn us a commission and change no number.
The method →