DigitalOcean logo Vast.ai logo

DigitalOcean vs Vast.ai

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What's good about...

DigitalOcean logo DigitalOcean

  • Simple, developer-first cloud
  • Predictable pricing & monthly caps
  • AI platform powered by Paperspace GPUs
  • Vast library of tutorials & 1-click apps

Vast.ai logo Vast.ai

  • Large pool of over 20,000 GPUs
  • Over 68 GPU types across 40+ data centers
  • Enterprise-grade security with SOC2 certification
  • Pre-built templates including PyTorch, CUDA, and TensorFlow

Price comparison

How do DigitalOcean's prices compare against Vast.ai?

VM Small

Closest config to 1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM.
DigitalOcean DigitalOcean
$6.00 / mo 1 vCPU, 1 GiB RAM (Basic)
Vast.ai Vast.ai
--

VM Medium

Closest config to 4 vCPU, 8 GB RAM.
DigitalOcean DigitalOcean
$48.00 / mo 4 vCPU, 8 GiB RAM (Basic)
Vast.ai Vast.ai
--

VM Large

Closest config to 8 vCPU, 16 GB RAM (dedicated preferred).
DigitalOcean DigitalOcean
$168.00 / mo 8 vCPU, 16 GiB RAM (CPU-Optimized)
Vast.ai Vast.ai
--

Block Storage

Closest config to 100+ GB SSD, 3,000+ IOPS, 100+ MB/s throughput, no snapshots.
DigitalOcean DigitalOcean
$10.00 / mo 100 GB
Vast.ai Vast.ai
--

Object Storage

Closest config to 1 TB stored, 100 GB in / 250 GB out, 1M GET, 100k PUT/POST.
DigitalOcean DigitalOcean
$20.00 / mo 1 TiB
Vast.ai Vast.ai
--

Load Balancer

Closest config to TCP, 1 node (1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM), 200+ Mbps, 1,000 conn/sec, 1 TB processed/mo.
DigitalOcean DigitalOcean
$12.00 / mo
Vast.ai Vast.ai
--

Managed PostgreSQL

Closest config to 1 node, 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, 50+ GB storage, 10 GB read / 5 GB write per month.
DigitalOcean DigitalOcean
$60.00 / mo 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, 60 GB storage
Vast.ai Vast.ai
--

Managed Redis®*

Closest config to 1 node, 1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM, 10 req/s, 1 KB avg request size.
DigitalOcean DigitalOcean
$15.00 / mo 1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM
Vast.ai Vast.ai
--

Serverless 25M Executions

Closest config to 25M invocations, 150ms execution time, 512 MB memory.
DigitalOcean DigitalOcean
$34.69 / mo 25M invocations, 512 MB RAM, 150 ms duration
Vast.ai Vast.ai
--

Free egress allowance

DigitalOcean DigitalOcean
100 GB - 10 TB / mo per instance
Vast.ai Vast.ai
--

1 TB of egress beyond allowance

DigitalOcean DigitalOcean
$10.00 $0.01 / GB
Vast.ai Vast.ai
--

Vast.ai logo Vast.ai Pricing Details

Vast.ai operates as a global marketplace where pricing is billed per second and broken into three components:

  1. Active rental cost for the GPU, charged only when an instance is running.

  2. Storage cost for allocated disk space, which applies as long as the instance exists (even when stopped).

  3. Bandwidth costs for data transfer.

GPU Fleet Overview

Starting Price

DigitalOcean DigitalOcean
$0.76/hr
Vast.ai Vast.ai
$0.02/hr

Billing Options

DigitalOcean DigitalOcean
On-DemandReserved (12mo)
Vast.ai Vast.ai
On-DemandSpotReserved (6mo)

Available Models

DigitalOcean offers 8 GPU models, while Vast.ai offers 56.

DigitalOcean DigitalOcean
H100(2) H200(1) L40S(1) B300(1) RTX 6000 Ada(1) MI300X(2) RTX 4000 Ada(1) MI325X(1)
Vast.ai Vast.ai
H100(67) A100(110) H200(54) B200(24) RTX Pro 6000(149) V100(36) RTX A6000(8) L4(16) RTX 4090(280) B300(4)
View all 56 GPUs

Heads up: We do our best to keep these specs & prices accurate. However, cloud costs may fluctuate based on region, usage, and other factors not listed here. These are estimates based on common setups and are for informational purposes only. Always verify current rates & exact specs with the provider before provisioning.

Which services do they offer

Here are some managed services that DigitalOcean and Vast.ai offer:

Service DigitalOcean Vast.ai
Block Storage
Content Delivery Network (CDN)
Container Registry
GPU-powered Servers
Load Balancer
Managed Containers
Managed Kubernetes
Managed MySQL
Managed PostgreSQL
Managed Redis®*
Object Storage
Serverless Cron Jobs
Serverless Functions
Static Sites
Virtual Private Server (VPS)

Company details

Website
DigitalOcean DigitalOcean
digitalocean.com
Vast.ai Vast.ai
vast.ai
Headquarters
DigitalOcean DigitalOcean
United States of America
Vast.ai Vast.ai
United States of America
Founded
DigitalOcean DigitalOcean
2011
Vast.ai Vast.ai
2018
Data Center Locations
DigitalOcean DigitalOcean
14
Vast.ai Vast.ai
--
Example Customers
DigitalOcean DigitalOcean
Crisp, ScraperAPI, GHost, and CTO.ai
Vast.ai Vast.ai
IBM, Brave, Speechify, Cognition, Bosch

Alternatives to consider

Compare DigitalOcean and Vast.ai against other cloud providers.

View all comparisons

Our data for DigitalOcean was last updated on June 23, 2026, and for Vast.ai on June 23, 2026.