DigitalOcean
vs
Azure
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
- Integrates with Entra ID, Microsoft 365, GitHub and Visual Studio
- Azure Arc and Azure Stack for hybrid and multicloud
- OpenAI models served through Azure AI Foundry
- 100+ compliance offerings, regional and industry-specific
- 60+ regions worldwide
Price comparison
Closest matching configuration on each side, monthly list price in USD.
| Service | DigitalOcean | Azure | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small VM | $6.00 /mo 1 vCPU, 1 GiB RAM (Basic) | $6.77 /mo 2 vCPU, 1 GB RAM (B2ats v2) | 11% cheaper on DigitalOcean |
| Medium VM | $48.00 /mo 4 vCPU, 8 GiB RAM (Basic) | $95.76 /mo 4 vCPU, 8 GB RAM (B4als v2) | 50% cheaper on DigitalOcean |
| Large VM | $168.00 /mo 8 vCPU, 16 GiB RAM (CPU-Optimized) | $231.84 /mo 8 vCPU, 16 GB RAM (D8als v6) | 28% cheaper on DigitalOcean |
| Block storage | $10.00 /mo 100 GB | $7.92 /mo 100 GB (Premium SSD v2) | 21% cheaper on Azure |
| Object storage | $20.00 /mo 1 TB | $35.25 /mo 1 TB | 43% cheaper on DigitalOcean |
| PostgreSQL | $60.90 /mo 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, 60 GB storage | $54.71 /mo 2 vCPU, 4 GiB RAM, 50 GB storage (Flexible Server B2s) | 10% cheaper on Azure |
| Redis | $15.00 /mo 1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM (Valkey) | $23.04 /mo 1 GB RAM (Managed Redis Balanced B1) | 35% cheaper on DigitalOcean |
| Load balancer | $12.00 /mo Regional HTTP, 1 node | $23.00 /mo Standard | 48% cheaper on DigitalOcean |
| Serverless | $34.69 /mo 25M invocations, 512 MB RAM, 150 ms duration | $35.00 /mo 25M invocations, 512 MB RAM, 150 ms duration | Within 5% |
| Egress allowance | 500 GB - 12 TB / mo per instance, pooled | 100 GB / mo | |
| Egress | $10.00 /TB $0.01 / GB | $87.00 /TB $0.087 / GB (Premium network North America) | 89% cheaper on DigitalOcean |
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 and Azure each offer 10 GPU models. Cheapest listed price per GPU per hour; GPUs both providers sell come first.
| GPU | DigitalOcean | Azure | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
H100
3 configs · 20 configs
|
$4.41 /GPU/hr On-demand | $6.98 /GPU/hr On-demand | 37% cheaper on DigitalOcean |
|
H200
3 configs · 4 configs
|
$4.47 /GPU/hr On-demand | $13.78 /GPU/hr On-demand | 68% cheaper on DigitalOcean |
MI300X
3 configs · 4 configs
|
$2.59 /GPU/hr On-demand | $7.86 /GPU/hr On-demand | 67% cheaper on DigitalOcean |
|
B300
2 configs
|
$7.94 /GPU/hr Reserved (12 mo) | -- | DigitalOcean only |
|
MI355X
1 config
|
$2.97 /GPU/hr Spot | -- | DigitalOcean only |
|
L40S
1 config
|
$1.57 /GPU/hr On-demand | -- | DigitalOcean only |
|
RTX 6000 Ada
1 config
|
$1.57 /GPU/hr On-demand | -- | DigitalOcean only |
|
RTX PRO 6000
40 configs
|
-- | $1.02 /GPU/hr Spot | Azure only |
|
A100
20 configs
|
-- | $0.68 /GPU/hr Spot | Azure only |
|
GB200
4 configs
|
-- | $11.90 /GPU/hr Reserved (36 mo) | Azure only |
DigitalOcean bills on-demand, spot and reserved (12 months); Azure bills on-demand, spot and reserved (12 or 36 months). 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 | Azure |
|---|---|---|
| SOC 2 | Type II | Type II |
| ISO 27001 | Data centers only | Yes |
| HIPAA | Yes | Yes |
| GDPR | Yes | Yes |
| PCI DSS | SAQ-A | Level 1 |
| FedRAMP | -- | High |
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 | Azure |
|---|---|---|
| Founded | 2012 | 2008 |
| Headquarters | USA | USA |
| Locations | 16 | 66 |
| Example customers | Crisp, ScraperAPI, GHost, and CTO.ai | General Motors, NHS, Fujitsu, NBA |
| Website | digitalocean.com | azure.microsoft.com |
Alternatives to consider
Compare DigitalOcean and Azure against other cloud providers.
Our data for DigitalOcean was last updated on Oct. 4, 2026, and for Azure on Oct. 4, 2026.