AWS Lightsail vs DigitalOcean Droplets
Neither wins outright: AWS Lightsail is cheaper for 1 of 3 workloads and DigitalOcean Droplets for the rest.
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 Lightsail | DigitalOcean Droplets | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry plan | $5.00/mo | $4.00/mo | 1.3× DigitalOcean Droplets |
| Compute | — | $0.0060/vCPU-hr | — |
| 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 Lightsail | DigitalOcean Droplets | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|
| Side projectA personal site or small app with modest traffic, a few gigabytes of assets, and one small always-on process. | $5.00 | $4.34 | DigitalOcean Dropletssaves $0.66/mo (13%) |
| Growing SaaSA funded product serving a few thousand daily users, with an image-heavy frontend and two application servers. | $10 | $14 | AWS Lightsailsaves $3.69/mo (27%) |
| Media-heavy siteA publisher or video product where delivery dominates the bill and compute is almost an afterthought. | $725 | $99 | DigitalOcean Dropletssaves $626/mo (86%) |
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 Lightsail
by Amazon Web Services
Amazon's flat-rate answer to DigitalOcean, bundling generous transfer into a fixed monthly price. Overage reverts to standard EC2 egress rates, which is where it stops being cheap.
Free tier: Three months free on the smallest plan
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 Lightsail or DigitalOcean Droplets cheaper in 2026?
- It depends on volume — AWS Lightsail wins 1 of the 3 modelled workloads and DigitalOcean Droplets wins 2. The scenario table above shows where the crossover falls.
- What is the difference in egress cost between AWS Lightsail and DigitalOcean Droplets?
- DigitalOcean Droplets charges $0.010 per GB against AWS Lightsail's $0.090, roughly 9× cheaper. Egress usually dominates the bill once traffic is measured in terabytes.
- Which has the better free tier, AWS Lightsail or DigitalOcean Droplets?
- Both publish one. AWS Lightsail: Three months free on the smallest plan. 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.