Table of Contents
- Basic Droplets: the plan ladder
- Dedicated-CPU families
- v5 Droplets: the configurable line
- Billing: per second, uncapped on v5
- Backups, snapshots and the rest of the bill
- US datacenters: five metros, two with the full lineup
- The platform around the Droplet
- What is not on the pages
- Against the alternatives
- Verdict and rating
- FAQ
- Sources
Basic Droplets: the plan ladder
The Droplet pricing page presents Basic Droplets with three CPU options, "Regular", "Premium Intel" and "Premium AMD"; the table below is the Regular option as printed on 2026-09-19. The feature documentation says "Droplets with Premium CPUs are guaranteed to use one of the latest two generations of CPUs we have" and that they "use NVMe SSDs and have higher network throughput speed"; their prices are on the page's other two tabs and are higher at each size.
| Memory | vCPUs | SSD | Transfer | Monthly |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 512 MiB | 1 | 10 GiB | 500 GiB | $4 |
| 1 GiB | 1 | 25 GiB | 1,000 GiB | $6 |
| 2 GiB | 1 | 50 GiB | 2,000 GiB | $12 |
| 2 GiB | 2 | 60 GiB | 3,000 GiB | $18 |
| 4 GiB | 2 | 80 GiB | 4,000 GiB | $24 |
| 8 GiB | 4 | 160 GiB | 5,000 GiB | $48 |
| 16 GiB | 8 | 320 GiB | 6,000 GiB | $96 |
Two shapes at 2 GiB exist: $12 with one vCPU and $18 with two, 60 GiB and 3,000 GiB of transfer. The ladder doubles cleanly from 1 GiB, and the transfer allowance grows with each step. Against this site's other providers, DigitalOcean's Basic line is priced level with Linode at every size and $2 above Vultr at 2 GiB; the Regular option is shared CPU on the same terms as those two.
Dedicated-CPU families
Above Basic, the page prints four families with dedicated vCPUs (all on Premium Intel in the printed tables), each a ladder from a 2-vCPU entry to a 32- or 48-vCPU top:
| Family | Entry (vCPU, memory, SSD, transfer) | Entry price | Further up the ladder |
|---|---|---|---|
| CPU-Optimized | 2 vCPUs, 4 GiB, 25 GiB, 4,000 GiB | $42 | 16 vCPUs, 32 GiB $336; 48 vCPUs, 96 GiB $1,008 |
| General Purpose | 2 vCPUs, 8 GiB, 25 GiB, 4,000 GiB | $63 | 8 vCPUs, 32 GiB $252; 40 vCPUs, 160 GiB $1,260 |
| Memory-Optimized | 2 vCPUs, 16 GiB, 50 GiB, 4,000 GiB | $84 | 4 vCPUs, 32 GiB $168; 32 vCPUs, 256 GiB $1,344 |
| Storage-Optimized | 2 vCPUs, 16 GiB, 300 GiB, 4,000 GiB | $131 | 4 vCPUs, 32 GiB, 600 GiB $262; 32 vCPUs, 256 GiB, 4,690 GiB $2,096 |
The families differ in memory per vCPU: 2 GiB per vCPU on CPU-Optimized, 4 on General Purpose, 8 on Memory-Optimized and Storage-Optimized, with the last adding a much larger NVMe disk (300 GiB at the entry, 4,690 GiB at the top). Pick by the ratio the workload needs: a compiler or encoder wants CPU-Optimized, a database Memory-Optimized, a file or log store Storage-Optimized. The 32 GB page and dedicated CPU page set these against other providers at the same sizes.
v5 Droplets: the configurable line
Alongside the fixed plans the page sells v5 Droplets, described as "Workload-optimized compute" on "5th Gen AMD EPYC" processors. The model is Kamatera's: "You pick vCPU, memory, and storage independently and pay for only the resources you use", and "Pricing is simple and based on an hourly rate, so your total bill reflects the actual hours used each month". Two kinds: Shared v5 Droplets, "designed for bursty, variable work that doesn't need guaranteed access to a dedicated core at all times", and General Purpose v5 Droplets, which "provide guaranteed, dedicated CPU, with memory ratios from 2x to 8x per vCPU". The page shows each resource's price as you configure and does not print a v5 table, so this review quotes no v5 prices; the fixed families above are the ones you can compare from a page.
Billing: per second, uncapped on v5
The pricing FAQ: "Bundled Plan and v5 Droplets are both billed on a per-second basis, with a 60-second minimum", and "v5 Droplets are billed on actual hours used each month and are not capped at 672 hours". Read together: the fixed plans' monthly figures are the ceiling for a full month (the traditional 672-hour cap), while a v5 Droplet running all month bills every hour it runs. The page also notes the move to per-second billing "with a minimum charge of 60 seconds or $0.01, whichever is higher". Powered-off Droplets keep billing because their disk and IP stay allocated; destroying the Droplet, or taking a snapshot and destroying it, is how you stop paying.
Backups, snapshots and the rest of the bill
From the "Additional product pricing" block: backups are "Percentage-based Backups, set at 20 % (Weekly) or 30 % (Daily) of Droplet cost", or usage-based plans that "start at $ 0.01 /GiB per month and offer highly flexible frequencies (up to every 4 hours) and custom retention periods (3 days to 6 months)"; Droplet snapshots are "$0.06/GB per month". Block storage volumes, load balancers, managed databases, Spaces and bandwidth overage are priced on their own product pages, which this review did not read; their figures are not quoted here. The pattern is the one to expect from a platform: the Droplet is one line, and a real application adds four or five more.
US datacenters: five metros, two with the full lineup
DigitalOcean sells Droplets in five US metros. Its regional availability page lists, in the United States, NYC1, NYC2 and NYC3 (New York City), SFO2 and SFO3 (San Francisco), ATL1 (Atlanta), RIC1 (Richmond), MKC1 (Kansas City) and MEM1 (Memphis), plus legacy AMS2 and SFO1 where creation is restricted. The product matrix on that page is what matters for a VPS buyer, and it is uneven: New York and San Francisco carry every Droplet family, Regular and Premium CPU alike. Atlanta, Richmond and Kansas City carry Basic, General Purpose, CPU-Optimized, Memory-Optimized and Storage-Optimized Droplets, but the page marks each of them with a restriction, "Only Premium CPUs are available" for Atlanta and "Only Premium Intel CPUs are available" for Richmond and Kansas City, so the $4 Regular-CPU Basic plan quoted at the top of this review cannot be ordered in those three cities. Memphis is different again: as of September 2026 the matrix shows only v5 Droplets and GPU Droplets there, none of the standard families. Earlier versions of this review counted four, then six, US cities; both counts treated a region listing as a Droplet listing, which this page does not support. Prices are the same in every region where a plan is sold. What is still absent: Texas, Los Angeles and the Pacific Northwest; the datacenter guide covers who that matters for.
The platform around the Droplet
The reason to pay DigitalOcean's price is not the Droplet; it is what sits next to it in the same account and region: managed databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis, MongoDB and others), a managed Kubernetes service, App Platform for deploying from a repository without a server, Spaces object storage with a CDN, load balancers, block storage volumes, VPC networking, a documented REST API with official clients, and a large library of tutorials that many people use regardless of where they host. This review has not evaluated those products; it notes them because they are the product a Droplet buyer is actually choosing, and because none of the cheaper hosts in the comparison below sells them.
What is not on the pages
- Premium Intel and Premium AMD Basic prices: on the page's other tabs, not in the default table this review quotes.
- v5 Droplet prices: shown in the configurator, not printed.
- Bandwidth overage per GiB, block storage, load balancer and managed database prices: on separate product pages not read for this version.
- Support plans and their prices: not on the pages read.
- Any performance figure: none published on these pages, none measured here.
Against the alternatives
| Provider | 2 GB plan | Monthly | Billing | US locations |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| InterServer | 1 core, 2 GB, 40 GB, 2 TB | $3 | Monthly | NYC, Dallas, LA |
| BuyVM | 1 core, 2 GB, 40 GB, unmetered | $7 | Monthly | Las Vegas, NY |
| Vultr | vc2-1c-2gb: 1 vCPU, 2 GB, 55 GB, 2 TB | $10 | Hourly | Nine regions |
| DigitalOcean | Basic 2 GiB: 1 vCPU, 50 GiB, 2,000 GiB | $12 | Per second | NYC, SFO; Premium-CPU only in Atlanta, Richmond, Kansas City |
| Linode | Linode 2GB: 1 vCPU, 50 GB, 2 TB | $12 | Hourly | Ten regions |
| Lightsail | 2 vCPUs, 2 GB, 60 GB, 3 TB | $12 | Hourly, capped | Three regions |
At 2 GB DigitalOcean ties Linode and Lightsail and costs $2 more than Vultr, which sells a comparable platform (managed databases, Kubernetes, object storage) with more US regions. The DigitalOcean vs Linode page takes that pair apart. Against InterServer the gap is four times, and the answer to whether it is worth it is whether the platform will be used.
Verdict and rating
DigitalOcean is a platform that happens to sell a very good plan ladder, and this review rates the ladder and the facts around it rather than the platform, which it has not evaluated. Rating: 4.2 out of 5. Credit for a clean printed ladder from $4 with the same price in every region, four dedicated-CPU families and a configurable line, per-second billing, Droplets in five US metros including Kansas City, a central-US location no other provider on this site matches (Premium-CPU plans only there), and backups and snapshots priced plainly. Marked down for a 2 GiB price above Vultr with fewer US regions, add-on prices scattered across product pages, and no printed prices for the Premium CPU options or v5 Droplets. The previous version rated it 4.5 on four years of production use that this site did not have; this version rates its pages.
Choose DigitalOcean if you will use its managed databases, Kubernetes or App Platform, or need Atlanta, Richmond or Kansas City and a Premium-CPU plan is acceptable. Choose Vultr if you want the same kind of platform for $2 less with more regions. Choose InterServer or BuyVM if you want a server and nothing else.