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DigitalOcean vs Vercel pricing

What each charges for the same traffic, and what happens when a post goes viral.

Verdict at 100,000 pageviews a month: DigitalOcean comes to $4 and Vercel to ≥ $20 a month at 100,000 pageviews with our default traffic profile. At least one total leaves out unverified prices, so we don't call a winner. Viral day: DigitalOcean bills ≥ $4; Vercel hits its free-tier cap (requests stop instead of billing), and its paid plan comes to ≥ $20.
DigitalOcean vs Vercel
DigitalOceanVercel
TypeVPSPlatform (PaaS)
Free tierUnverifiedSource · Oct 16Hobby $0 (personal, non-commercial; hard caps, no overage purchase)Source · Oct 16
Free bandwidth—100 GBSource · Oct 16
Free requests—1,000,000Source · Oct 16
Paid planBasic Droplet 512MiB/1vCPU/10GiBSource · Oct 16ProSource · Oct 16
Price$4/monthSource · Oct 16$20/monthSource · Oct 16
Included500 GiB transferSource · Oct 161 TB transfer, 10M CDN requestsSource · Oct 16
Bandwidth overageUnverifiedSource · Oct 16$0.15/GBSource · Oct 16
Requests overage—$2 per millionSource · Oct 16
Over the free limitNo free tierHard cap

Try your own traffic

Scenario
Traffic details2 MB pages · 20 requests · 10% dynamic · 30 deploys
Pages
Functions
Deploys
Always-on server

The always-on server is used for Railway, which bills a service that runs all month. Fly.io uses one small machine.

One month at your traffic. Totals use verified prices only; “≥” means some items are unverified and left out.

  1. DigitalOcean
    Basic Droplet 512MiB/1vCPU/10GiB
    $4/mo
    Cheapest verifiedKeeps billingNo free tier.
    How this is calculated
    Cost breakdown
    Droplet (flat monthly price)$4.00Source, Oct 16, 2026

    A flat-price server has fixed CPU and RAM; whether it can serve this much traffic depends on your app.

  2. Vercel
    Pro
    ≥ $20/mo
    Keeps billingExcludes unverified itemsFree tier stops at its cap at ~50k pageviews/mo.
    How this is calculated
    Cost breakdown
    Pro plan (1 seat)$20.00Source, Oct 16, 2026

    Not included (unverified): Function invocations (included amount not in the data); Active CPU (included amount not in the data); Memory (included amount not in the data); Build minutes (included amount not in the data)

    Pro keeps billing past the included amounts; Vercel sets a default on-demand budget of $200, with an optional hard pause.

FAQ

Is DigitalOcean or Vercel cheaper for 100,000 pageviews a month?

DigitalOcean comes to $4 and Vercel to ≥ $20 a month at 100,000 pageviews with our default traffic profile. At least one total leaves out unverified prices, so we don't call a winner.

What happens to DigitalOcean and Vercel on a viral day?

On a month with one day at 50× normal traffic: DigitalOcean bills ≥ $4; Vercel hits its free-tier cap (requests stop instead of billing), and its paid plan comes to ≥ $20.

Does DigitalOcean or Vercel have a hard cap on the free tier?

DigitalOcean has no free tier. Vercel's free tier: hard cap.

Full details: DigitalOcean pricing · Vercel pricing