DigitalOcean
The developer cloud with the best documentation in the business and the best Trustpilot score of the big names: a London Droplet from $4, the reference server at $24 with weekly backups taking it to $28.80, pooled egress at a cent a gigabyte, managed databases, Kubernetes with a free control plane, App Platform, a three-tier marketplace, and a US Delaware company on the contract.
How we testDigitalOcean (DigitalOcean Holdings, Inc., NYSE-listed since March 2021, Broomfield, Colorado; contracting entity DigitalOcean, LLC under Delaware law) built its reputation on making a server simple, and on a tutorial library that taught a generation of developers how to run one. Sixteen data centres in thirteen regions include London (LON1), Amsterdam (AMS3) and Frankfurt (FRA1). Prices in US dollars only, VAT added at 20% for UK customers without a VAT number, read 8 September 2026. The smallest Basic Droplet is 1 vCPU, 512 MiB and 10 GB with 500 GiB of transfer for $4 a month ($6 for the 1 GB size). The reference 2 vCPU, 4 GB, 80 GB Basic Droplet with 4 TiB of transfer is $24 a month ($0.0357 an hour). Weekly automatic backups cost 20% of the Droplet price and daily backups 30%, so the real monthly cost with weekly backups is $28.80, about $34.56 with UK VAT; the reserved IPv4 is free while attached. Transfer is pooled across the team and overage is $0.01 per GiB; snapshots are $0.06 per GB a month; Spaces object storage is $5 a month for 250 GiB and a TiB of transfer.
The platform around the Droplet is the reason to pay a little more than Vultr or Hetzner: managed PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Kafka, Valkey and OpenSearch from $15 a month; DOKS Kubernetes with the control plane, bandwidth and registry included so you pay only for nodes; App Platform with a free static tier; load balancers from $12; VPCs and free cloud firewalls; an official Terraform provider and the doctl CLI. The 1-Click Marketplace is explicit about who maintains what: a DigitalOcean-maintained tier, an experimental "SharkLabs" tier that may not be updated, and third-party vendor apps, though no image count or cadence is published. DigitalOcean's MCP server has moved from an archived package to an experimental labs repository, so it exists but is not a supported product. Support is 24/7 by ticket on the free plan, with paid plans at $24, $99 and $999 a month for chat, Slack and faster responses; no published uptime SLA was found.
On sovereignty it is a straightforward US cloud: one Delaware contracting entity, SOC 2 and SOC 3 Type II, PCI DSS and CSA STAR at company level, ISO 27001 at the colocation facilities, and no CLOUD Act statement or EU line. Trustpilot is 4.6 on 2,542 reviews (76% five-star, 19% one-star, not currently inviting), with the one-star themes the usual ones: account lockouts, surprise billing after inactivity, verification friction. Capable, well-documented, and priced for it.
Not yet tested by Saaskly: assessed on published pricing, documentation and third-party reviews.
Pros
- +The best documentation and developer platform here: managed databases, Kubernetes with a free control plane, App Platform, VPCs and free firewalls
- +London, Amsterdam and Frankfurt; pooled transfer with a cent-a-gigabyte overage; a marketplace that states who maintains each image
- +Trustpilot 4.6 on 2,542 reviews
Cons
- −USD only, with UK VAT on top; $24 plus 20% for backups is a fifth more than Vultr for the same server
- −A single US contracting entity, no EU line, no CLOUD Act statement
- −MCP server is a labs project; no published uptime SLA; paid support from $24 a month
Pricing
Minimum commitment: $4 ($4/mo × 1 seat × 1 month (no commitment)). The least you can spend before walking away; excludes numbers, minutes and add-ons.
Basic Droplet 512 MiB
$4/mo · no commitment
Same price on any term
- ✓1 vCPU / 512 MiB / 10 GB SSD, 500 GiB transfer, $0.00595/hr, IPv4 included, ex VAT (UK VAT 20% added without a VAT number). 1 GB size $6. USD only.
Basic Droplet 4 GB
$24/mo · no commitment
Same price on any term
- ✓2 vCPU / 4 GB / 80 GB SSD, 4 TiB pooled transfer, $0.0357/hr. Backups 20% weekly ($4.80) or 30% daily; snapshots $0.06/GB/mo; overage $0.01/GiB. Real monthly cost with weekly backups: $28.80.
Specifications
| Rating | 3.9 |
| Smallest instance | $4/mo (1 vCPU / 512 MiB / 10 GB SSD) |
| Reference instance | $24/mo (2 vCPU / 4 GB / 80 GB SSD) |
| Real monthly cost* | $28.80/mo |
| Hourly billing | ✓ |
| Transfer included | 4 TB |
| Egress overage | $0.010/GB |
| Public IPv4 | Included |
| Backups | 20% weekly or 30% daily of the Droplet price |
| UK location | ✓ |
| EU locations | 2 |
| Locations | 16 |
| Owned in** | US-owned |
| Sovereign offering | None |
| Owner | DigitalOcean Holdings, Inc. |
| Vendor-maintained images | ✓ |
| Managed databases | ✓ |
| Kubernetes | ✓ |
| Object storage | ✓ |
| API | ✓ |
| Terraform | ✓ |
| MCP server | ✓ |
| Trustpilot (reviews) | 4.6 (2,542) |
| Snapshots (per GB/mo) | $0.060 |
| Free credit | Promotional credit for new accounts (amount varies) |
| UK cities | London |
| HQ | US |
| Publicly listed | ✓ |
| ISO 27001 | No |
| SOC 2 | ✓ |
| Block storage | ✓ |
| Load balancers | ✓ |
| Bare metal | No |
| GPU instances | ✓ |
| ARM instances | No |
| Image marketplace | ✓ |
| DDoS protection included | No |
| Private networking | ✓ |
| CLI | ✓ |
| 2FA | ✓ |
| Phone support | No |
| Support channels | Ticket 24/7, Live chat (paid plans), Slack (paid plans) |
*Real monthly cost: the reference instance (the nearest to 2 vCPU / 4 GB / 80 GB) with automatic backups switched on and a public IPv4 address, per month at the monthly or capped-hourly rate, in the currency the vendor shows a UK visitor on the research date; see each profile for the VAT basis, the backup rule and the egress bill on top.
**Owned in: where the company that owns the provider answers to. A US-owned provider is subject to US law (including the CLOUD Act) wherever the data centre is; a local data centre is not the same thing as local jurisdiction. "Sovereign offering" records what the vendor offers beyond a local data centre.
Researched and drafted with AI assistance; reviewed and approved by Tim Meredith. How we use AI
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