Head-to-head
Fly.io vs DigitalOcean
Two hosts, side by side. Pricing, features, and the trade-offs that actually matter.
Fly.io from Free
Run small full-stack apps in dozens of regions for genuinely low cost — when it works.
HQ US · founded 2017
DigitalOcean from $6/mo
The original developer-friendly VPS — now with a full PaaS layer on top.
HQ US · founded 2011
Quick verdict
Cheapest: Fly.io wins on entry price (Free vs $6/mo).
More features: DigitalOcean ships more first-party platform features out of the box.
Region: Fly.io is HQ'd in US; DigitalOcean in US.
Cheapest plans, side by side
| Fly.io | DigitalOcean | |
|---|---|---|
| Entry plan | Free (3× shared-cpu-1x) | Basic 1 GB |
| Price | Free | $6/mo |
| CPU | 1 vCPU | 1 vCPU (shared) |
| RAM | 0.25 GB | 1 GB |
| Disk | 3 GB | 25 GB |
| Bandwidth | 160 GB | 1 TB |
Feature parity
| Fly.io | DigitalOcean | |
|---|---|---|
| Managed Postgres | ✓ | ✓ |
| Managed Redis | ✓ | ✓ |
| Object storage | ✓ | ✓ |
| One-click apps | × | ✓ |
| Private network | ✓ | ✓ |
| IPv6 | ✓ | ✓ |
| DDoS protection | ✓ | ✓ |
| Snapshots | ✓ | ✓ |
| Public API | ✓ | ✓ |
| Terraform | ✓ | ✓ |
Fly.io pros
- +35+ regions, deploy multi-region with one command
- +Run any Docker image — no platform-specific buildpacks
- +Generous always-free tier (3 small machines)
Fly.io cons
- −Reliability has been bumpy across 2023–2025; status page tells the story
- −Support is community-first — paid support tiers exist but are light
- −Some primitives (volumes, secrets) have rough edges that bite production apps
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