DigitalOcean
vs
Nova Cloud
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
- Per-second billing with no contracts or minimum spend
- Owned-and-operated datacenters in Western Canada
- Reserved 1, 3, and 6 month terms for additional discounts
- 5 Gb/s network bandwidth with all ports available
Price comparison
Closest matching configuration on each side, monthly list price in USD.
| Service | DigitalOcean | Nova Cloud | 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 | -- Not listed | |
| 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 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 Nova Cloud offers 2. Cheapest listed price per GPU per hour; GPUs both providers sell come first.
| GPU | DigitalOcean | Nova Cloud | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
|
|
$3.26 /GPU/hr Reserved (12 mo) | -- | DigitalOcean only |
|
|
$7.94 /GPU/hr Reserved (12 mo) | -- | DigitalOcean only |
|
|
$3.40 /GPU/hr Reserved (12 mo) | -- | DigitalOcean only |
|
|
$2.97 /GPU/hr Spot | -- | DigitalOcean only |
|
|
$1.91 /GPU/hr Reserved (12 mo) | -- | DigitalOcean only |
|
|
$1.57 /GPU/hr On-demand | -- | DigitalOcean only |
|
|
$1.57 /GPU/hr On-demand | -- | DigitalOcean only |
|
|
$2.88 /GPU/hr Reserved (12 mo) | -- | DigitalOcean only |
|
|
-- | $0.30 /GPU/hr Spot · sold out | Nova Cloud only |
|
|
-- | $0.53 /GPU/hr Reserved (6 mo) | Nova Cloud only |
DigitalOcean bills on-demand, spot and reserved (12 months); Nova Cloud bills on-demand, spot and reserved (1, 3 or 6 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 | Nova Cloud |
|---|---|---|
| SOC 2 | Type II | -- |
| ISO 27001 | Data centers only | -- |
| HIPAA | Yes | -- |
| GDPR | 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 | Nova Cloud |
|---|---|---|
| Founded | 2012 | 2018 |
| Headquarters | USA | Canada |
| Locations | 16 | 1 |
| Example customers | Crisp, ScraperAPI, GHost, and CTO.ai | -- |
| Website | digitalocean.com | nova-cloud.ai |
Alternatives to consider
Compare DigitalOcean and Nova Cloud against other cloud providers.
Our data for DigitalOcean was last updated on Oct. 1, 2026, and for Nova Cloud on Oct. 1, 2026.