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Cloud VPS · by DigitalOcean

DigitalOcean Droplets

Developer-friendly virtual machines from $4/mo with per-second billing, pooled bandwidth and managed databases, load balancers and Kubernetes on the same account.

Visit digitalocean.com ↗ Alternatives Paid EU region
DigitalOcean Droplets homepage
§1

Overview

DigitalOcean Droplets are Linux virtual machines managed through a web console, CLI, API or Terraform provider. Basic Droplets use shared vCPUs and start at $4/month; General Purpose, CPU-Optimized, Memory-Optimized and Storage-Optimized plans use dedicated vCPUs for steady production load, and newer v5 Droplets let you pick CPU, memory and disk separately.

Since 1 January 2026 Droplets are billed per second with a 60-second minimum, and every plan includes outbound transfer that pools across all Droplets in a team. Going over costs $0.01 per GiB, and firewalls and basic monitoring are free.

The main reason to choose DigitalOcean over a cheaper VPS host is the surrounding platform: managed PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Kafka and Valkey, Kubernetes, load balancers, Spaces object storage and App Platform all live on the same bill. The trade-off is that the cheapest Basic plans cost more per GB of RAM than budget European hosts. Before paying, decide whether you need backups and whether a Premium plan with NVMe storage is worth the extra cost for your workload.

§2

Pricing and plans

Plan Price What you get
Basic 512 MiB $4/mo 1 vCPU, 512 MiB RAM, 10 GiB SSD, 500 GiB transfer
Basic 1 GiB $6/mo 1 vCPU, 1 GiB RAM, 25 GiB SSD, 1,000 GiB transfer
Basic 2 GiB $12/mo 1 vCPU, 2 GiB RAM, 50 GiB SSD, 2,000 GiB transfer
Basic 4 GiB $24/mo 2 vCPU, 4 GiB RAM, 80 GiB SSD, 4,000 GiB transfer
CPU-Optimized 4 GiB $42/mo 2 dedicated vCPU, 4 GiB RAM, 25 GiB SSD
General Purpose 8 GiB $63/mo 2 dedicated vCPU, 8 GiB RAM, 25 GiB SSD

Backups cost 20% (weekly) or 30% (daily) of the Droplet price, or usage-based from $0.01/GiB per month; snapshots are $0.06/GB per month. Additional outbound transfer is $0.01/GiB; inbound is free. v5 Droplets are configured per resource and bill IPv4 separately. Taxes are extra.

Source: www.digitalocean.com/pricing/droplets · prices as published, excluding tax.

§3

What it does

Pooled transfer
Each Droplet adds its allowance to a team-wide pool, so one busy server can use another's unused transfer; overage is $0.01/GiB.
Per-second billing
From January 2026 Droplets bill per second with a 60-second or $0.01 minimum, capped at a monthly price.
Private Droplets
Droplets can run without a public IP, isolated inside a VPC, at the same price.
Free firewalls and monitoring
Cloud Firewalls, metrics and alerting are included with every Droplet.
Managed services nearby
Managed databases, Kubernetes, load balancers and Spaces object storage are offered in the same regions.
Backups
Weekly, daily or custom-frequency backups, priced as a share of the Droplet or per GiB.
§4

Strengths and limitations

Strengths

  • Clear published prices with transfer included and a low $0.01/GiB overage rate.
  • 13 regions across North America, Europe, India, Singapore and Australia.
  • Managed databases, Kubernetes and App Platform let a project grow without changing provider.
  • Well-known documentation and tutorials, with API, CLI and Terraform support.

Limitations

  • Basic plans give less RAM per dollar than budget hosts such as Hetzner, netcup or Contabo.
  • The $4 plan has only 512 MiB RAM and 10 GiB of disk.
  • Backups are extra, at 20% to 30% of the Droplet price.
  • Some newer data centers (Atlanta, Richmond, Kansas City) have limited availability for Basic plans.
§5

Who it suits

Good for

  • Side projects and small SaaS apps
  • Teams that want managed databases next to their servers
  • Developers who value simple billing and docs

Look elsewhere if

  • Getting the most RAM and disk for the lowest price
  • Workloads needing a very wide choice of regions or compliance programs
§6

Pricing history

  • Droplets move to per-second billing

    Effective 1 January 2026, Droplets are billed per second with a minimum charge of 60 seconds or $0.01, replacing hourly billing. Monthly caps still apply. Source ↗

§7

Alternatives to DigitalOcean Droplets

Tool From Free option Stages
$4/mo Paid
€3/mo Paid
$5/mo Paid
$2.50/mo Paid
€6.55/mo Paid
$4/mo Paid

All VPS and cloud servers →

§8

Questions

How much does the cheapest DigitalOcean Droplet cost?

The Basic Droplet with 1 vCPU, 512 MiB RAM, 10 GiB SSD and 500 GiB transfer costs $4/month.

What does DigitalOcean charge for bandwidth overage?

Outbound transfer beyond the pooled allowance costs $0.01 per GiB, and inbound transfer is free.

Is a DigitalOcean Droplet the same as a VPS?

Yes. Droplet is DigitalOcean's name for a virtual private server; you manage the operating system and software yourself.

Does DigitalOcean bill by the hour?

Since 1 January 2026 Droplets are billed per second, with a minimum of 60 seconds or $0.01, and never above the monthly price.

Sources read for this page