Table of Contents
1. The five families, in DigitalOcean's words
Each family is sold on a different ratio of memory to CPU, and DigitalOcean states the ratio rather than leaving it to the plan table.
| Family | What DigitalOcean says it is for | Ratio |
|---|---|---|
| Basic | "most efficient CPU usage at a lower cost for workloads that underuse dedicated threads", "ideal for bursty applications that can handle variable levels of CPU" | Shared threads |
| CPU-Optimized | "fast (2.6GHz+), dedicated vCPUs ... optimal for applications that demand fast, consistent performance such as media streaming, gaming and data analytics" | 2 GiB per vCPU |
| General Purpose | "a balanced ratio of memory to dedicated CPU, suitable for a wide variety of production workloads" | Balanced |
| Memory-Optimized | "provide 8 GiB RAM for each vCPU. The additional memory can help you avoid excessively swapping to disk or getting out-of-memory errors" | 8 GiB per vCPU |
| Storage-Optimized | "use NVMe ... It takes advantage of parallelism to deliver disk performance that can be order of magnitude faster than our regular SSDs" | Disk-led |
Two of those families carry a "Premium variant", which DigitalOcean says "also provides up to 10Gbps outbound network speeds and NVMe SSDs" , the difference between a regular and a Premium dedicated plan, in the company's own summary.
2. The Basic ladder
The shared tier, with the hourly figure DigitalOcean prints beside the monthly one:
| Memory | vCPUs | Transfer | SSD | Hourly | Monthly |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 512 MiB | 1 | 500 GiB | 10 GiB | $0.00595 | $4 |
| 1 GiB | 1 | 1,000 GiB | 25 GiB | $0.00893 | $6 |
| 2 GiB | 1 | 2,000 GiB | 50 GiB | $0.01786 | $12 |
| 2 GiB | 2 | 3,000 GiB | 60 GiB | $0.02679 | $18 |
| 4 GiB | 2 | 4,000 GiB | 80 GiB | $0.03571 | $24 |
| 8 GiB | 4 | 5,000 GiB | 160 GiB | $0.07143 | $48 |
| 16 GiB | 8 | 6,000 GiB | 320 GiB | $0.14286 | $96 |
Read from DigitalOcean's pricing page on 2026-09-25. The $4 row is the cheapest Droplet and the one this site's cheapest page lists for the company; 512 MiB is below what a database-backed WordPress site needs, as that page explains.
The ladder's shape is worth noting: the first three rungs buy memory, and from $18 upward each step buys vCPUs as well, at roughly $6 per GiB either way. That is a different curve from InterServer's linear $3 slices or Vultr's fixed tiers, and it is why the same money buys 4 GiB at DigitalOcean and 8 GiB at Contabo.
3. The dedicated families
The three families with dedicated vCPUs, as published. Only the first rung of each is shown; the ladders continue with the same ratio.
| Family | Entry plan | Hourly | Monthly |
|---|---|---|---|
| CPU-Optimized | 2 vCPUs, 4 GiB, 4,000 GiB transfer, 25 GiB SSD | $0.06250 | $42 |
| General Purpose | 2 vCPUs, 8 GiB, 4,000 GiB transfer, 25 GiB SSD | $0.09375 | $63 |
| Memory-Optimized | 2 vCPUs, 16 GiB, 4,000 GiB transfer, 50 GiB SSD | $0.12500 | $84 |
These are the plans to compare against the dedicated lines elsewhere on this site rather than against the $4 Basic Droplet: Contabo's dedicated-vCPU line, Hetzner's CCX and Linode's Dedicated plans are the same idea at different ratios and prices. At $42 for 4 GiB, DigitalOcean's CPU-Optimized entry sits well above the shared hosts and below the hyperscalers' comparable sizes; the Azure page has the equivalent figures for Microsoft's B-series.
4. CPU options and the v5 processors
Every plan table carries three CPU columns: Regular, Premium Intel and Premium AMD. The option changes the processor behind the same memory and vCPU count, which is the closest any host on this site comes to selling CPU quality as a line item rather than a family.
Where the processor is named, DigitalOcean ties it to the v5 line: "v5 Droplets run on 5th Gen AMD EPYC processors with up to 30% higher per-core performance vs. prior-generation DigitalOcean Droplets (based on DigitalOcean internal testing)." Read the qualifier as part of the claim: the 30% is DigitalOcean's own measurement against its own previous servers, not an independent figure, and the CPU page explains why a vendor's internal number and a sysbench run on your own Droplet are different kinds of fact.
5. Transfer and network speed
"Each Droplet includes a generous amount of free outbound data transfer. The specific amount depends on the Droplet plan you choose, starting from 500 GiB/month. Inbound bandwidth is always free." The allowance rises with the plan: 500 GiB on the $4 Droplet, 1,000 GiB on the $6, then 2,000, 3,000, 4,000, 5,000 and 6,000 GiB on the larger ones.
Network speed is published only for the Premium dedicated variants, "up to 10Gbps outbound network speeds"; the Basic plans have no port figure on the page this site read, which is the same gap the network page records for most hosts at this price.
6. Billing: hourly, monthly, per-second
DigitalOcean prints both units on every plan and changed the finer one recently: "Effective January 1, 2026, we're moving to per-second billing (with a minimum charge of 60 seconds or $0.01, whichever is higher) for Droplets." For a server created, tested and destroyed the same afternoon, that is the difference between paying for an hour and paying for minutes; and also the reason this site's measurement instructions assume a Droplet is cheap to rent briefly.
7. Snapshots and backups
Both are separate line items, which is worth the space because providers differ here more than they do on plan prices.
| Feature | Price as published | On a $12 Droplet |
|---|---|---|
| Snapshots | "$0.06/GB per month" | $0.06 per GiB of snapshot storage |
| Backups, percentage-based | "20% (Weekly) or 30% (Daily) of Droplet cost" | $2.40 a month weekly, $3.60 daily |
| Backups, usage-based | "start at $0.01/GiB per month", frequencies up to every four hours, custom retention | Depends on the size backed up |
The third column is this site's arithmetic on DigitalOcean's published percentages and is labelled as such. Backups are a paid add-on rather than an included feature, unlike Hetzner's or InterServer's positioning; the backup guide covers the self-managed alternative for providers that include nothing.
8. Regions
DigitalOcean lists its datacentres in the pricing FAQ: "data centers in multiple locations around the world, including San Francisco, Richmond, NYC, Kansas City, Atlanta, Toronto, Amsterdam, London, Frankfurt, Bangalore, Singapore, and Sydney". Five of those are in the United States, and the review covers which Droplet families run in which of them, since the Basic line is not sold in every metro.
9. What DigitalOcean does not publish
- Disk IOPS or throughput per plan, even on the Storage-Optimized family, where the claim is relative ("order of magnitude faster than our regular SSDs") rather than numeric.
- A port speed for Basic Droplets. The 10 Gbps figure belongs to Premium dedicated variants.
- An exact processor model per plan. The generation is named for v5; the per-plan column is a CPU option, not a part number.
- A published uptime SLA on the pages read for this page.