Head-to-head
DigitalOcean vs Vultr
Two hosts, side by side. Pricing, features, and the trade-offs that actually matter.
DigitalOcean from $6/mo
The original developer-friendly VPS — now with a full PaaS layer on top.
HQ US · founded 2011
Vultr from $6/mo
A leaner DigitalOcean clone with more regions and competitive pricing.
HQ US · founded 2014
Quick verdict
Cheapest: Vultr wins on entry price ($6/mo vs $6/mo).
More features: DigitalOcean ships more first-party platform features out of the box.
Region: DigitalOcean is HQ'd in US; Vultr in US.
Cheapest plans, side by side
| DigitalOcean | Vultr | |
|---|---|---|
| Entry plan | Basic 1 GB | Cloud Compute 1 GB |
| Price | $6/mo | $6/mo |
| CPU | 1 vCPU (shared) | 1 vCPU |
| RAM | 1 GB | 1 GB |
| Disk | 25 GB | 25 GB |
| Bandwidth | 1 TB | 1 TB |
Feature parity
| DigitalOcean | Vultr | |
|---|---|---|
| Managed Postgres | ✓ | ✓ |
| Managed Redis | ✓ | × |
| Object storage | ✓ | ✓ |
| One-click apps | ✓ | ✓ |
| Private network | ✓ | ✓ |
| IPv6 | ✓ | ✓ |
| DDoS protection | ✓ | ✓ |
| Snapshots | ✓ | ✓ |
| Public API | ✓ | ✓ |
| Terraform | ✓ | ✓ |
DigitalOcean pros
- +Best documentation in the industry by a wide margin
- +Managed Postgres, MySQL, Redis, Mongo, Kafka — all first-party
- +App Platform (Heroku-style git push) on the same dashboard as droplets
DigitalOcean cons
- −Roughly 2× the price of Hetzner for equivalent compute
- −Bandwidth overage charges hit hard once you exceed the bundled allotment
- −Some regions (Sydney, Bangalore) have noticeably slower disk than NYC/AMS
Vultr pros
- +32 global regions — denser footprint than DO or Linode
- +High-frequency CPU plans (3+ GHz Intel) are genuinely fast for bursty workloads
- +Bare-metal and GPU plans on the same dashboard
Vultr cons
- −Documentation is thinner than DigitalOcean's
- −Support tickets can take 24h+ on weekends
- −The dashboard feels dated next to Hetzner / Railway