DigitalOcean
vs
Vast.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
- Budget cards to Blackwell, including the RTX PRO 6000 and B200
- On-demand, interruptible and reserved rentals
- SOC 2 Type II certified, with vetted datacenter hosts in Secure Cloud
- Host reliability ratings and GPU performance benchmarks
- REST API, CLI, Python SDK and coding agent plugins
Price comparison
Closest matching configuration on each side, monthly list price in USD.
| Service | DigitalOcean | Vast.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 | -- 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 Vast.ai offers 66. Cheapest listed price per GPU per hour; GPUs both providers sell come first.
| GPU | DigitalOcean | Vast.ai | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
H100
3 configs · 17 configs
|
$4.41 /GPU/hr On-demand | $1.73 /GPU/hr On-demand | 61% cheaper on Vast.ai |
|
B300
2 configs · 6 configs
|
$8.00 /GPU/hr Spot | $4.88 /GPU/hr Spot | 39% cheaper on Vast.ai |
|
H200
3 configs · 44 configs
|
$4.47 /GPU/hr On-demand | $3.91 /GPU/hr On-demand | 13% cheaper on Vast.ai |
|
L40S
1 config · 30 configs
|
$1.57 /GPU/hr On-demand | $0.54 /GPU/hr On-demand | 66% cheaper on Vast.ai |
|
RTX 6000 Ada
1 config · 14 configs
|
$1.57 /GPU/hr On-demand | $0.54 /GPU/hr On-demand | 66% cheaper on Vast.ai |
|
RTX 4000 Ada
1 config · 14 configs
|
$0.76 /GPU/hr On-demand | $0.20 /GPU/hr On-demand | 74% cheaper on Vast.ai |
MI355X
1 config
|
$2.97 /GPU/hr Spot | -- | DigitalOcean only |
|
MI300X
3 configs
|
$1.91 /GPU/hr Reserved (12 mo) | -- | DigitalOcean only |
|
B200
8 configs
|
-- | $7.13 /GPU/hr Spot | Vast.ai only |
|
RTX PRO 6000
66 configs
|
-- | $0.26 /GPU/hr Spot | Vast.ai only |
DigitalOcean bills on-demand, spot and reserved (12 months); Vast.ai bills on-demand, spot and reserved (1, 3, 6, 12, 24, 36 or 48 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 | Vast.ai |
|---|---|---|
| SOC 2 | Type II | Type II, platform only |
| ISO 27001 | Data centers only | -- |
| HIPAA | Yes | Secure Cloud tier 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 | Vast.ai |
|---|---|---|
| Founded | 2012 | 2018 |
| Headquarters | USA | USA |
| Locations | 16 | 10 |
| Example customers | Crisp, ScraperAPI, GHost, and CTO.ai | IBM, Brave, Speechify, Cognition, Bosch |
| Website | digitalocean.com | vast.ai |
Alternatives to consider
Compare DigitalOcean and Vast.ai against other cloud providers.
Our data for DigitalOcean was last updated on Oct. 2, 2026, and for Vast.ai on Oct. 2, 2026.