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ProvidersVPS · Checked 2026-10-29

DigitalOcean

Ordinary Linux VMs at a flat monthly price, with a hardened one-click OpenClaw image and a separate managed agent runtime.

Short answer: One always-on personal agent (2 vCPU / 4 GiB / 20 GiB) costs about $24.00 a month here, the 5th cheapest of the 12 providers that run it as described. The AI model adds about $14.70 a month on top (GLM 5.3, 30 requests a day at 40k tokens each, median zero-retention price; from $6.84 at the cheapest host). Fits well: An always-on agent on a normal Linux box: root, Docker, SSH, a public IPv4 and a flat $24 a month for 2 vCPU / 4 GiB.

www.digitalocean.com/products/droplets17 providersSources linked

DigitalOcean sells Linux virtual machines called Droplets: pick a size, a region and an image, and the machine is yours to administer over SSH. There is no sandbox API and no pause, so it behaves like the VPS a developer would rent for a web server.

Two catalogues sit behind the same product. Bundled plans are fixed shapes in five families, from 512 MiB for $4 a month to 32 vCPU / 256 GiB; v5 configurations on 5th-gen AMD EPYC let you choose vCPU, memory and boot disk independently, but only in four US datacenters.

For agents specifically, the Marketplace carries 1-Click Droplet images for OpenClaw, Hermes Agent and Docker Agent. DigitalOcean also sells Managed Agents, a separate product whose sessions run in Firecracker microVMs with pause, resume and fork; its monthly plan is branded Agent Droplets and is not a VM.

At a glance

Who it is forPeople who want a normal Linux server per agent, a flat monthly bill, a choice of 16 regions and a public IP, and who are happy to install and patch the agent themselves.
IsolationFull Linux virtual machine with its own kernel, root and SSH. RAM, disk and network are dedicated; the vCPU is shared on Basic plans and dedicated on the four optimized families. Docker runs inside, and nested virtualisation is not documented.
Sizes31 bundled CPU shapes: Basic shared CPU from 512 MiB / 1 vCPU / 10 GiB to 16 GiB / 8 vCPU / 320 GiB, plus CPU-Optimized, General Purpose, Memory-Optimized and Storage-Optimized up to 32 vCPU / 256 GiB / 4,690 GiB. v5 sizes CPU, memory and boot disk freely, 1-8 shared or 2-64 dedicated vCPU. GPU Droplets go up to 8x H200. 16 datacenters, two of them in the EU.
A personal agent hereAbout $24.00 a month for one always-on 2 vCPU / 4 GiB machine (Basic 2 vCPU / 4 GiB: 2 vCPU / 4 GiB / 80 GiB), before the AI model. Change the numbers
Recommended in

Fits well, fits badly

Our reading of the sourced material on this page, not a provider claim.

Fits well

  • An always-on agent on a normal Linux box: root, Docker, SSH, a public IPv4 and a flat $24 a month for 2 vCPU / 4 GiB.
  • A hardened OpenClaw deployment from the Marketplace: TLS, a gateway token, device pairing and container isolation are configured before you log in.
  • Teams that need a region choice (16 datacenters, including Amsterdam and Frankfurt) and a 99.99% per-Droplet SLA.
  • Agents that must reach the internet on arbitrary ports, or be reached on them: no port restrictions beyond SMTP.

Fits badly

  • Anything that needs to stop and resume mid-process: powering off loses memory and keeps billing.
  • Bursty, short-lived work: you pay for the whole hour the Droplet exists, so 1,000 ten-minute tasks cost the same as 1,000 hours of idling.
  • A reader who wants the provider to install and run the agent: outside the three Marketplace images, you do the setup.
  • Point-in-time recovery or a fork of a running machine: snapshots are disk-only and newest-state only.

How it bills

ModelPay-as-you-go per Droplet, with no plan fee and no commitment.
MeterPer second with a 60-second minimum, at the published hourly rate. Bundled plans cap at 672 hours a month, so an always-on machine costs the flat monthly price.
While stoppedA powered-off Droplet is billed in full, because its compute stays reserved on the hypervisor. Only destroying it ends the charge, and that also deletes the disk unless you snapshotted it.
Plan feeNone. Agent Droplets ($50 or $200 a month) is a separate plan for Managed Agents, not for VMs.
Minimum$4 a month for the smallest Basic Droplet. A $5 signup credit lasts 90 days, and a payment method is required before the first Droplet.

How DigitalOcean lets you try before paying is on Trials and free tiers.

Where it stands out

  • A full Linux VM with root, Docker, SSH and a public IPv4 for $24 a month flat.
  • The cheapest hardened one-click OpenClaw deployment here, at $12 a month, with TLS and a gateway token already configured.
  • 16 datacenters including Amsterdam and Frankfurt, and a 99.99% uptime SLA per Droplet.
  • No egress charge inside a 500 GiB-11,000 GiB allowance, and any TCP port except SMTP.
  • Granular API token scopes, OIDC single sign-on, six team roles, official Python/TypeScript/Go clients and an official MCP server.

Using it without writing code

DashboardYes. Create a Droplet in a few clicks, watch graphs, open a browser console, resize, snapshot, rebuild, resize disks and manage firewalls, DNS and volumes.
Without codePartly. Creating the machine and opening its console needs no terminal, and the OpenClaw image arrives configured. Installing and running any other agent does need one.
SignupEmail, password and a payment method. The $5 signup credit expires after 90 days, and no Droplet can be created until a card or PayPal is on file.
Docs and supportA large docs site with an llms.txt index, a release-notes feed, a public API reference, official Python, TypeScript and Go clients, and an official MCP server. Support is tickets plus community Q&A.

Capability checklist

Every capability the guide checks, with the catch where DigitalOcean's version falls short. Compare all providers

Isolation

Sizes and regions

Lifecycle

  • Pause keeps memory With a catch A Droplet has no pause: powering off loses memory and running processes and still bills in full. Only Managed Agents sessions pause and resume.
  • Pre-started pools With a catch Autoscale pools keep Droplets running behind a load balancer, but there is no way to hand a pre-started machine to a job.
  • Starts in under a second With a catch A Droplet takes about a minute to boot; only Managed Agents sessions start in about a second.

Snapshots and forks

Storage

Idle and waking

Reaching it

Custom domains

  • Your own domain Yes
  • Automatic HTTPS With a catch Automatic certificates exist only on Load Balancers and Spaces; a plain Droplet needs Caddy or Certbot.

Outbound network

Keys and secrets

  • Stored secrets With a catch A Droplet has no secret store, so keys sit in cloud-init, files or environment variables; only Managed Agents stores and injects secrets.
  • Secrets the agent cannot read With a catch Only Action Gateway brokers credentials so the model never sees them; an agent on a Droplet can read the keys in its own environment.
  • Limited API keys Yes

Ways to drive it

Built-in agents

Teams and accounts

Billing models

Trials and free tiers

The company

The company

From the profile's company section: the legal entity, who funds it, and what a buyer can check before signing.

Legal entity

DigitalOcean, LLC, a US company. The DPA names it as the contracting party.

“This Data Processing Agreement (“DPA”) is an addendum to the Customer Terms of Service (“Agreement”)” digitalocean.com docs-confirmed

Founded and listed

Founded in 2012; public since its 2018 IPO and listed on the NYSE as DOCN, with more than 680,000 customers.

“DigitalOcean (NYSE: DOCN) is the AI-Native Cloud, purpose-built for inference and agentic workloads.” investors.digitalocean.com docs-confirmed

Uptime promise

99.99% monthly uptime per Droplet, with a 100% service credit if missed.

“DigitalOcean commits to a Monthly Uptime Percentage of 99.99% for each individual Droplet instance.” digitalocean.com pricing-page

Certification

SOC 2 Type II and SOC 3 Type II, audited by Schellman & Company; a DPA is published.

“DigitalOcean maintains a SOC 2 Type II and SOC 3 Type II certification, issued by our independent auditor, Schellman & Company.” digitalocean.com docs-confirmed

Status page

status.digitalocean.com lists Droplets and each datacenter separately.

“All Systems Operational” status.digitalocean.com docs-confirmed

Caveats and contradictions

Shown as the research found them. A contradiction means the provider's own pages disagree; an open question means the answer is not published.

  1. 01

    A powered-off Droplet bills in full Open question

    DigitalOcean keeps the compute reserved on the hypervisor, so stopping the machine changes nothing on the invoice. Workload C therefore costs the full $24 monthly price, not the $3.21 the running hours suggest.

  2. 02

    The monthly cap and the hourly rate disagree at 730 hours Open question

    Bundled plans are capped at 672 hours, so 730 hours costs the flat monthly price. The shared calculator has no cap rule and multiplies 730 by the hourly rate, overstating B by $4.14.

  3. 03

    OpenClaw's minimum Droplet size changed Contradiction

    The January technical deep dive says the image needs a $24/month Droplet; the February announcement says it now runs on the $12 tier. This profile uses $12 and treats the earlier figure as superseded.

    “While this currently necessitates a minimum $24/month Droplet size to match the snapshot’s disk and memory requirements”
    DigitalOceandocs-confirmed
    “OpenClaw is now accessible on our $12/month Droplet tier”
    DigitalOceandocs-confirmed
  4. 04

    Nested virtualisation is mentioned but never documented Open question

    The live-migration page tells people with nested VMs to restart them afterwards, but no plan page says nested virtualisation is available or how to enable it. Treat it as unknown, not as supported.

  5. 05

    Agent Droplets is not a Droplet Open question

    The name describes the $50 or $200 monthly plan for Managed Agents, whose compute is per-session Firecracker microVMs at $0.044 per vCPU-hour plus $0.0095 per GB-hour. It is a different product with a different meter and should not be priced as a VM.

Sources

The three shared workloads

List-price illustrations from the calculator, not quotes. Prices checked 29 October 2026.

A · 1,000 short tasks

$10.00

Basic 2 vCPU / 4 GiB: 2 vCPU / 4 GiB / 80 GiB (plan: Pay as you go)

  • Machine time (Basic 2 vCPU / 4 GiB)166.67 h × $0.03571$5.95
  • Minimum charge per run1,000 runs × ($0.01 − $0.005952)$4.05
  • Bundled sizes bill per second up to 672 hours a month, so an always-on Droplet costs the flat monthly price shown on the pricing page.
  • A powered-off Droplet is billed in full because its compute stays reserved on the hypervisor; only destroying it ends the charge. To pay only for the hours used, destroy the Droplet and keep a snapshot instead.
  • Each Droplet is billed at least 60 seconds or $0.01, whichever is higher, so a ten-minute run on a small size costs a cent. The calculator applies this to every run.
  • Disk is included in each size; the calculator's only disk charge is a volume at $0.10 per GiB-month when the request is bigger than the size's own disk.
  • Snapshots cost $0.06 per GB-month and are kept until deleted. Backups cost 20% (weekly) or 30% (daily) of the Droplet price. Neither is in the calculator.
  • v5 Droplets price resources separately at $0.0158219 per shared vCPU-hour, $0.0040411 per GiB-hour and $0.000137 per GiB of boot disk an hour, with no monthly cap, but only in ATL1, RIC1, MKC1 and MEM1.
  • Agent Droplets and Harness Runtime are a different product on a different meter and are not priced by this card.

B · One always-on box

$48.00

Basic 4 vCPU / 8 GiB: 4 vCPU / 8 GiB / 160 GiB (plan: Pay as you go)

  • Machine time (Basic 4 vCPU / 8 GiB)730 h × $0.07143$52.14
  • Monthly price cap1 × $48.00 a month$-4.14
  • Bundled sizes bill per second up to 672 hours a month, so an always-on Droplet costs the flat monthly price shown on the pricing page.
  • A powered-off Droplet is billed in full because its compute stays reserved on the hypervisor; only destroying it ends the charge. To pay only for the hours used, destroy the Droplet and keep a snapshot instead.
  • Each Droplet is billed at least 60 seconds or $0.01, whichever is higher, so a ten-minute run on a small size costs a cent. The calculator applies this to every run.
  • Disk is included in each size; the calculator's only disk charge is a volume at $0.10 per GiB-month when the request is bigger than the size's own disk.
  • Snapshots cost $0.06 per GB-month and are kept until deleted. Backups cost 20% (weekly) or 30% (daily) of the Droplet price. Neither is in the calculator.
  • v5 Droplets price resources separately at $0.0158219 per shared vCPU-hour, $0.0040411 per GiB-hour and $0.000137 per GiB of boot disk an hour, with no monthly cap, but only in ATL1, RIC1, MKC1 and MEM1.
  • Agent Droplets and Harness Runtime are a different product on a different meter and are not priced by this card.

C · Three hours a day

$24.00

Basic 2 vCPU / 4 GiB: 2 vCPU / 4 GiB / 80 GiB (plan: Pay as you go)

  • Machine time (Basic 2 vCPU / 4 GiB)90 h × $0.03571$3.21
  • Stopped, still billed640 h × $0.03571$22.85
  • Monthly price cap1 × $24.00 a month$-2.07
  • Bundled sizes bill per second up to 672 hours a month, so an always-on Droplet costs the flat monthly price shown on the pricing page.
  • A powered-off Droplet is billed in full because its compute stays reserved on the hypervisor; only destroying it ends the charge. To pay only for the hours used, destroy the Droplet and keep a snapshot instead.
  • Each Droplet is billed at least 60 seconds or $0.01, whichever is higher, so a ten-minute run on a small size costs a cent. The calculator applies this to every run.
  • Disk is included in each size; the calculator's only disk charge is a volume at $0.10 per GiB-month when the request is bigger than the size's own disk.
  • Snapshots cost $0.06 per GB-month and are kept until deleted. Backups cost 20% (weekly) or 30% (daily) of the Droplet price. Neither is in the calculator.
  • v5 Droplets price resources separately at $0.0158219 per shared vCPU-hour, $0.0040411 per GiB-hour and $0.000137 per GiB of boot disk an hour, with no monthly cap, but only in ATL1, RIC1, MKC1 and MEM1.
  • Agent Droplets and Harness Runtime are a different product on a different meter and are not priced by this card.