Provider comparison · Updated 2026-09-20

Azure vs DigitalOcean Cost Comparison

Side-by-side pricing including compute, egress, storage, load balancer, managed database, and the hidden costs that don't show up in basic estimates. All prices are on-demand, monthly, in USD.

Microsoft Azure

Best for enterprises using Microsoft stack.

Complexity: high★★★★☆

DigitalOcean

Developer-friendly. Simple pricing, generous bandwidth.

Complexity: low★★★★☆

Compute pricing (on-demand, monthly)

Tier	Azure	DigitalOcean	DigitalOcean saves
Nano (1 vCPU / 512 MB) B1ls / s-1vcpu-512mb	$3.80/mo	$4.34/mo	+14% more
Micro (1 vCPU / 1 GB) B1s / s-1vcpu-1gb	$7.59/mo	$6.52/mo	14% cheaper
Small (2 vCPU / 4 GB) B2s / s-2vcpu-4gb	$30.37/mo	$26.07/mo	14% cheaper
Medium (4 vCPU / 16 GB) D4s_v5 / g-4vcpu-16gb	$140.16/mo	$136.88/mo	2% cheaper
Large (8 vCPU / 32 GB) D8s_v5 / g-8vcpu-32gb	$280.32/mo	$273.75/mo	2% cheaper
XLarge (16 vCPU / 64 GB) D16s_v5 / g-16vcpu-64gb	$560.64/mo	$547.50/mo	2% cheaper

Egress cost - the surprise bill item

Data transferred out to the internet per month.

Data out / month	Azure	DigitalOcean	Difference
10 GB	Free	Free	-
100 GB	Free	Free	-
500 GB	$35	Free	DigitalOcean saves $35
1 TB	$78	Free	DigitalOcean saves $78
5 TB	$426	$40	DigitalOcean saves $387

Managed services pricing

Object Storage

Azure

$0.018/GB/mo

DigitalOcean

$0.021/GB/mo

Spaces Object Storage. 250 GB + 1 TB transfer included at $5/month flat.

Load Balancer

Azure

~$18/mo

DigitalOcean

~$12/mo

Load Balancer: $12/month flat. Simple and predictable.

Managed PostgreSQL

Azure

~$12/mo

DigitalOcean

~$15/mo

Managed PostgreSQL. 10 GB storage included.

Calculate for your specific workload

The numbers above are for reference. Plug in your actual requirements to get a real cost estimate.

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