DigitalOcean
vs
Runpod
Both rent H100, H200 and AMD MI300X GPUs. DigitalOcean charges less for VMs and runs managed databases, while Runpod rents RTX 4090 and 5090 cards.
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
- GPUs from RTX 3070 to B300 in one catalog
- Serverless GPU endpoints that scale to zero
- Built-in deployments, autoscaling & monitoring
- No ingress or egress fees
- SOC 2 Type II certified
Price comparison
Closest matching configuration on each side, monthly list price in USD.
| Service | DigitalOcean | Runpod | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small VM | $6.00 /mo 1 vCPU, 1 GiB RAM (Basic) | $43.20 /mo 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM (Compute-Optimized) | 86% cheaper on DigitalOcean |
| Medium VM | $48.00 /mo 4 vCPU, 8 GiB RAM (Basic) | $86.40 /mo 4 vCPU, 8 GB RAM (Compute-Optimized) | 44% cheaper on DigitalOcean |
| Large VM | $168.00 /mo 8 vCPU, 16 GiB RAM (CPU-Optimized) | $172.80 /mo 8 vCPU, 16 GB RAM (Compute-Optimized) | Within 5% |
| Block storage | $10.00 /mo 100 GB | $10.00 /mo 100 GB | 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 | Free and unlimited | |
| Egress | $10.00 /TB $0.01 / GB | Free and unlimited |
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 Runpod offers 35. Cheapest listed price per GPU per hour; GPUs both providers sell come first.
| GPU | DigitalOcean | Runpod | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
H100
3 configs · 13 configs
|
$4.41 /GPU/hr On-demand | $2.59 /GPU/hr On-demand | 41% cheaper on Runpod |
|
B300
2 configs · 4 configs
|
$7.94 /GPU/hr Reserved (12 mo) | $7.89 /GPU/hr On-demand | Different terms |
|
H200
3 configs · 6 configs
|
$4.47 /GPU/hr On-demand | $3.59 /GPU/hr On-demand | 20% cheaper on Runpod |
MI300X
3 configs · 2 configs
|
$2.59 /GPU/hr On-demand | $2.39 /GPU/hr On-demand · sold out | 8% cheaper on Runpod |
|
L40S
1 config · 7 configs
|
$1.57 /GPU/hr On-demand | $0.79 /GPU/hr On-demand | 50% cheaper on Runpod |
|
RTX 6000 Ada
1 config · 4 configs
|
$1.57 /GPU/hr On-demand | $0.84 /GPU/hr On-demand | 46% cheaper on Runpod |
|
RTX 4000 Ada
1 config · 3 configs
|
$0.76 /GPU/hr On-demand | $0.28 /GPU/hr On-demand | 63% cheaper on Runpod |
|
MI355X
1 config
|
$4.50 /GPU/hr Spot | -- | DigitalOcean only |
|
MI325X
3 configs
|
$2.88 /GPU/hr Reserved (12 mo) | -- | DigitalOcean only |
|
B200
3 configs
|
-- | $5.98 /GPU/hr On-demand · sold out | Runpod only |
DigitalOcean bills on-demand, spot and reserved (12 months); Runpod 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 | Runpod |
|---|---|---|
| SOC 2 | Type II | Type II |
| ISO 27001 | Data centers only | Yes |
| HIPAA | Yes | Yes |
| 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 | Runpod |
|---|---|---|
| Founded | 2012 | 2022 |
| Headquarters | USA | USA |
| Locations | 16 | 33 |
| Example customers | Crisp, ScraperAPI, GHost, and CTO.ai | Civitai, Cognition, Cursor, Hugging Face, Perplexity, Replit |
| Website | digitalocean.com | www.runpod.io |
Alternatives to consider
Compare DigitalOcean and Runpod against other cloud providers.
Our data for DigitalOcean was last updated on Sept. 22, 2026, and for Runpod on Sept. 23, 2026.