DigitalOcean vs Vultr: a 2 vCPU, 8 GB server at four traffic levels
You'll pay $63 a month for a dedicated 2 vCPU, 8 GB server on DigitalOcean and $60 on Vultr, until your traffic passes the plan's allowance. At 10 TB out a month, those bills are $125.40 and $90.72. On American Cloud the same server is $64.13 at any traffic level. We don't charge for outbound transfer.
The traffic rule moves the bill more than the plan price
Price your traffic before you pick a plan. DigitalOcean and Vultr both charge $0.01 for each GiB or GB out past what the plan includes. DigitalOcean's plan includes 4,000 GiB. Vultr's includes 5,120 GB, and the account adds 2 TB on top. Past that, every extra TB adds $10.24 to either bill.
Our bill has no line for traffic. At 20 TB out, it comes in $163.67 under DigitalOcean's and $128.99 under Vultr's.
American Cloud, DigitalOcean and Vultr, row by row
Our server prices include the $1 public IP, and every plan here has dedicated vCPUs. We left out shared plans (DigitalOcean Basic; Vultr Regular, High Frequency and High Performance) and Vultr's VX1, which boots from block storage. Monthly list prices in US dollars.
What one server costs as traffic grows
One server alone on the account, a full month at list price, with 1 TB counted as 1,024 GiB or GB.
What one server costs as traffic grows ($ a month)
1 TB out
- American Cloud
- $64.13
- DigitalOcean
- $63.00
- Vultr
- $60.00
5 TB out
- American Cloud
- $64.13
- DigitalOcean
- $74.20
- Vultr
- $60.00
10 TB out
- American Cloud
- $64.13
- DigitalOcean
- $125.40
- Vultr
- $90.72
20 TB out
- American Cloud
- $64.13
- DigitalOcean
- $227.80
- Vultr
- $193.12
Three things the plan price doesn't show
The allowance grows with time and servers
Start a server with 14 days left in the month and it earns half its allowance on both: 2,000 GiB on DigitalOcean, 2,560 GB on Vultr. Each server you add brings its own share. Five of these servers pool 20,000 GiB on DigitalOcean. On Vultr they pool 25,600 GB, plus the account's one 2 TB. So the account's 2 TB counts for less as you add servers. What stays is the per-server gap: 5,120 GB against 4,000 GiB. On American Cloud there's nothing to earn or run out of.
What a faster support reply costs
On American Cloud, you open chat in the portal and support replies in under 2 minutes, on every account. DigitalOcean sells response time: free tickets aim for a reply within 24 hours, $24 a month brings that to 8 hours, $99 to 2 hours with live chat, and $999 to 30 minutes. Vultr handles support through tickets and a general-inquiries form.
A bucket that serves files
Take a bucket holding 500 GB that serves 2 TB a month, counting 1 GB as 1 GiB and 1 TB as 1 TiB. On American Cloud it's $10: storage at $0.02 per GB, and serving costs nothing. DigitalOcean Spaces comes to $20.24: the $5 base, $5 for the 250 GiB stored past it, and $10.24 for the TiB served past the first. Vultr comes to $28: the $18 base and $10 for the second TB out.
A server whose bill doesn't move with traffic
If your app serves users, you should know the month's bill before the month starts. We price a VM from three numbers: $10 per vCPU, $5 per GB of RAM and $1 per 16 GB of disk, a month. A dedicated 2 vCPU, 8 GB server with 50 GB of disk is $63.13, or $64.13 with a public IP, and there's no egress rate to add on top. Aron Wagner, our CEO, calls it "a fixed cost for us and a fixed cost for our customers."
A 4 vCPU, 16 GB server is $126 with its IP, the same as DigitalOcean's list price for that shape, and it stays $126 after traffic passes DigitalOcean's 5,000 GiB. On AMD EPYC, our Premium tier, the smaller server is $76.75. Put your own vCPU, RAM and disk into the calculator on our pricing page.
Questions people ask
Is DigitalOcean or Vultr cheaper?
Vultr, at every traffic level in the chart, for a dedicated 2 vCPU, 8 GB server: $3 less than DigitalOcean at 1 TB, $14.20 less at 5 TB and $34.68 less from 10 TB up. Our price doesn't move with traffic, so at 10 TB it's under both.
Who owns DigitalOcean?
Its shareholders. DigitalOcean is a public company, traded on the New York Stock Exchange as DOCN. It was founded in 2012.
Is Vultr trustworthy?
Vultr is privately held, and its terms are a contract with The Constant Company, LLC, at 319 Clematis Street in West Palm Beach, Florida. Today's terms say Vultr claims no proprietary rights in your content. In March 2024 a Reddit post said an older clause gave Vultr rights to customer content. Vultr said that clause covered only its public forum and that it was taking the language out.
Who are DigitalOcean's and Vultr's main competitors?
Each other, plus American Cloud, Akamai Cloud (Linode), Hetzner and AWS Lightsail. American Cloud doesn't bill outbound traffic. Akamai Cloud charges $0.005 per GB of transfer past its allowance in US regions. Hetzner owns data centers in Germany and Finland, also runs cloud servers in the US and Singapore, and charges $1.20 for each extra TB in the US and EU.
Can I move from DigitalOcean or Vultr to American Cloud?
Yes. We don't import disk images, so you provision and sync: build each server here, copy the data with rsync while the old server keeps serving, move buckets with rclone, then switch DNS. Our docs have a DigitalOcean migration guide in the Deploy with AI section, and a move from Vultr follows the same steps. Hundreds of customers have moved here from AWS or DigitalOcean.
Compare other clouds
Start the same server on American Cloud
Create an account, move one service over, and keep the old server running until you're happy with it.