DigitalOcean
vs
Lightning AI
What's good about each
- Monthly price caps on bundled Droplet plans
- Nvidia and AMD GPU Droplets, plus bare metal
- Outbound traffic allowance shared across the whole account
- Large tutorial library and 1-click app marketplace
- Billed by the second, interruptible machines 50-80% off
- Studios move between its own cloud, AWS, GCP, Lambda and Nebius
- Owned H100, B200 and GB300 fleet in US datacenters
- Bring your own AWS or GCP account and spend cloud credits
Price comparison
Closest matching configuration on each side, monthly list price in USD.
| Service | DigitalOcean | Lightning AI | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small VM | $6.00 /mo 1 vCPU, 1 GiB RAM (Basic) | -- Not listed | |
| Medium VM | $48.00 /mo 4 vCPU, 8 GiB RAM (Basic) | -- Not listed | |
| Large VM | $168.00 /mo 8 vCPU, 16 GiB RAM (CPU-Optimized) | -- Not listed | |
| Block storage | $10.00 /mo 100 GB | $10.00 /mo 100 GB (Drive) · First 10 GB free | Identical |
| Object storage | $20.00 /mo 1 TB | -- Not listed | |
| PostgreSQL | $60.90 /mo 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, 60 GB storage | -- Not listed | |
| Redis | $15.00 /mo 1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM (Valkey) | -- Not listed | |
| Load balancer | $12.00 /mo Regional HTTP, 1 node | -- Not listed | |
| Serverless | $34.69 /mo 25M invocations, 512 MB RAM, 150 ms duration | -- Not listed | |
| Egress allowance | 500 GB - 12 TB / mo per instance, pooled | -- Not listed | |
| Egress | $10.00 /TB $0.01 / GB | Not publicly listed |
Heads up: Figures take each provider's closest plan to a common setup, and vary by region and usage. Hover a service for the reference configuration. Verify before provisioning. More on how we price.
GPUs
DigitalOcean offers 10 GPU models, while Lightning AI offers 8. Cheapest listed price per GPU per hour; GPUs both providers sell come first.
| GPU | DigitalOcean | Lightning AI | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
H100
3 configs · 4 configs
|
$4.41 /GPU/hr On-demand | $5.45 /GPU/hr On-demand | 19% cheaper on DigitalOcean |
|
H200
3 configs · 4 configs
|
$4.47 /GPU/hr On-demand | $4.50 /GPU/hr On-demand | Within 5% |
|
L40S
1 config · 3 configs
|
$1.57 /GPU/hr On-demand | $2.97 /GPU/hr On-demand | 47% cheaper on DigitalOcean |
|
B300
2 configs
|
$6.17 /GPU/hr Spot | -- | DigitalOcean only |
MI355X
1 config
|
$4.50 /GPU/hr Spot | -- | DigitalOcean only |
|
MI300X
3 configs
|
$1.91 /GPU/hr Reserved (12 mo) | -- | DigitalOcean only |
|
RTX 6000 Ada
1 config
|
$1.57 /GPU/hr On-demand | -- | DigitalOcean only |
|
B200
1 config
|
-- | $9.86 /GPU/hr On-demand | Lightning AI only |
|
RTX PRO 6000
4 configs
|
-- | $4.63 /GPU/hr On-demand | Lightning AI only |
|
A100
8 configs
|
-- | $1.55 /GPU/hr On-demand | Lightning AI only |
DigitalOcean bills on-demand, spot and reserved (12 months); Lightning AI bills on-demand. The line under each price names the billing type shown.
Services
Managed services each provider offers.
Compliance
Frameworks each provider states on its own site, each linked to its source.
| Framework | DigitalOcean | Lightning AI |
|---|---|---|
| SOC 2 | Type II | Type II, AWS and GCP clouds only |
| ISO 27001 | Data centers only | -- |
| HIPAA | Yes | AWS and GCP clouds only |
| GDPR | Yes | Yes |
| PCI DSS | SAQ-A | -- |
Heads up: Each entry links to the provider's own statement. An attestation can cover one tier, one region or the platform alone rather than every service. Verify the scope before you rely on it. A dash means we found nothing to link to, not that the provider lacks it.
Company details
| Fact | DigitalOcean | Lightning AI |
|---|---|---|
| Founded | 2012 | 2019 |
| Headquarters | USA | USA |
| Locations | 16 | -- |
| Example customers | Crisp, ScraperAPI, GHost, and CTO.ai | Nvidia, Cursor, Cisco, Runway, Supercell, Stability AI, Black Forest Labs |
| Website | digitalocean.com | lightning.ai |
Alternatives to consider
Compare DigitalOcean and Lightning AI against other cloud providers.
Our data for DigitalOcean was last updated on Oct. 28, 2026, and for Lightning AI on Oct. 28, 2026.