AWS EC2 vs DigitalOcean Droplets
DigitalOcean Droplets is cheaper across every workload modelled here.
List prices checked
Rate cards side by side
Only the axes at least one of them bills on. A dash means that provider does not charge for it.
| Billing axis | AWS EC2 | DigitalOcean Droplets | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry plan | — | $4.00/mo | — |
| Compute | $0.042/vCPU-hr | $0.0060/vCPU-hr | 7× DigitalOcean Droplets |
| Data transfer out | $0.090/GB | $0.010/GB | 9× DigitalOcean Droplets |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes | — |
Source: Amazon Web Services pricing (May 2026) · DigitalOcean pricing (August 2026). Published list prices only — committed-use discounts, regional variation, and per-request charges are not included. Not yet independently re-checked against the vendor’s page.
Monthly cost for three real workloads
The rate cards applied to identical usage. This is where the winner changes.
| Workload | AWS EC2 | DigitalOcean Droplets | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|
| Side projectA personal site or small app with modest traffic, a few gigabytes of assets, and one small always-on process. | $39 | $4.34 | DigitalOcean Dropletssaves $35/mo (89%) |
| Growing SaaSA funded product serving a few thousand daily users, with an image-heavy frontend and two application servers. | $151 | $14 | DigitalOcean Dropletssaves $137/mo (91%) |
| Media-heavy siteA publisher or video product where delivery dominates the bill and compute is almost an afterthought. | $930 | $99 | DigitalOcean Dropletssaves $831/mo (89%) |
Workload definitions are identical on every comparison page, so figures here can be read against any other pair in the same category.
What each one is for
AWS EC2
by Amazon Web Services
On-demand instances across every region and instance family. List rates are the highest in this category on both compute and egress; reserved instances and savings plans are how the price actually comes down.
Free tier: 750 hours per month of a t-class micro instance for 12 months
DigitalOcean Droplets
by DigitalOcean
Predictable flat-rate virtual machines with pooled account-level bandwidth. Costs more per vCPU than the European budget hosts and less than any hyperscaler.
Free tier: 500 GB to 1 TB of pooled egress per Droplet
Common questions
- Is AWS EC2 or DigitalOcean Droplets cheaper in 2026?
- DigitalOcean Droplets is cheaper in all 3 modelled workloads.
- What is the difference in egress cost between AWS EC2 and DigitalOcean Droplets?
- DigitalOcean Droplets charges $0.010 per GB against AWS EC2's $0.090, roughly 9× cheaper. Egress usually dominates the bill once traffic is measured in terabytes.
- Which has the better free tier, AWS EC2 or DigitalOcean Droplets?
- Both publish one. AWS EC2: 750 hours per month of a t-class micro instance for 12 months. DigitalOcean Droplets: 500 GB to 1 TB of pooled egress per Droplet.
- What do these estimates not include?
- Committed-use and reserved discounts, regional price variation, per-request API charges, support plans, and minimum retention periods. All of those move real invoices, sometimes by a lot. These figures compare published list prices for the same workload, which is the comparison the rate cards alone cannot give you.