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DigitalOcean vs Hetzner: services, regions and GPUs
Updated: · Comparison generated from structured data
Direct answer
Choosing between DigitalOcean and Hetzner depends first on location, required services and GPU access. 11 documented capabilities are only available on DigitalOcean and 1 only on Hetzner. Measured performance is covered on the benchmark pages.
Executive summary
DigitalOcean and Hetzner document 20 and 10 of the same 26 criteria respectively, with 9 capabilities in common. DigitalOcean bills per-second and Hetzner bills per-hour. DigitalOcean has no infrastructure in Türkiye; Hetzner has no infrastructure in Türkiye. DigitalOcean offers H100, H200, L40S; Hetzner offers none of H100/H200/L40S.
Key findings
- 01 Capabilities documented only by DigitalOcean: Per-second or per-minute billing, Managed Kubernetes, Kubernetes node autoscaling, Kubernetes LoadBalancer integration, Kubernetes storage classes (CSI), Volume snapshots, Managed database, L4 load balancer (TCP/UDP), NVIDIA H100 instances, NVIDIA H200 instances, NVIDIA L40S instances.
- 02 Capabilities documented only by Hetzner: Dedicated / single-tenant resources.
Overview
| DigitalOcean | Hetzner | |
|---|---|---|
| Headquarters | New York, United States | Gunzenhausen, Germany |
| Operator | DigitalOcean Holdings, Inc. | Hetzner Online GmbH |
| Regions | Regions in North America, Europe (Amsterdam, Frankfurt, London), Asia and Australia; none in Türkiye. | Cloud locations in Germany (Falkenstein, Nuremberg), Finland (Helsinki), the United States and Singapore; none in Türkiye. |
| Billing model | Per second — GPU Droplets are billed per second with a minimum charge of 60 seconds or $0.01, whichever is higher; powered-off GPU Droplets continue to bill until destroyed. | Per hour — Cloud servers are billed per started hour up to a monthly price cap. Object Storage has an hourly base price with included storage and egress quotas. |
| Documented capabilities | 20 / 26 | 10 / 26 |
| Technologies | Kubernetes (DOKS), S3 API (Spaces), Terraform | hcloud API, Terraform (hcloud provider), Kubernetes CCM/CSI, S3 API |
Availability and regions
DigitalOcean
- Frankfurt fra1 Generally available
- Amsterdam ams3 Generally available
- London lon1 Generally available
Hetzner
- Falkenstein fsn1 Generally available
- Nuremberg nbg1 Generally available
- Helsinki hel1 Generally available
Features
| Criterion | DigitalOcean | Hetzner |
|---|---|---|
| Data residency | ||
| Infrastructure located in Türkiye Generally available compute and storage capacity physically located in Türkiye (full region or local zone). | No | No |
| Compute & GPU | ||
| Virtual machine instances Self-service virtual machines with selectable CPU/RAM profiles. | Yes | Yes |
| Per-second or per-minute billing Standard compute billed at per-second or per-minute granularity rather than per started hour. | Yes Per-second (60 s / $0.01 minimum). | No Per started hour with a monthly cap. |
| Dedicated / single-tenant resources Dedicated hosts, bare metal or organisation-dedicated cloud capacity. | Partial Dedicated CPU Droplets; no single-tenant hosts. | Yes Dedicated root servers. |
| NVIDIA H100 instances On-demand or reservable instances with NVIDIA H100 GPUs. | Yes | No |
| NVIDIA H200 instances On-demand or reservable instances with NVIDIA H200 GPUs. | Yes | No |
| NVIDIA L40S instances On-demand or reservable instances with NVIDIA L40S GPUs. | Yes | No |
| Platform & automation | ||
| API and Terraform automation Documented API plus an available Terraform provider for infrastructure as code. | Yes | Yes |
| Open-source cloud stack (OpenStack-based) The provider publicly states that its IaaS control plane is built on OpenStack or an equivalent open-source stack. | No | No |
| Kubernetes | ||
| Managed Kubernetes Provider-operated Kubernetes control plane. | Yes | No CCM and CSI driver for self-managed clusters only. |
| Kubernetes node autoscaling Worker node count scales automatically within configured limits. | Yes | Partial Through the upstream cluster autoscaler on self-managed clusters. |
| Kubernetes LoadBalancer integration Services of type LoadBalancer provision a provider load balancer automatically. | Yes | Partial Via the Hetzner cloud-controller-manager on self-managed clusters. |
| Kubernetes storage classes (CSI) Persistent volumes provisioned dynamically through a provider storage class. | Yes | Partial Via the Hetzner CSI driver on self-managed clusters. |
| Storage & data | ||
| Block storage volumes Persistent, attachable and expandable block volumes. | Yes | Yes |
| Volume snapshots Point-in-time snapshots of block volumes. | Yes | No Server snapshots only; no volume snapshots. |
| S3-compatible object storage Object storage reachable through the S3 API or an S3-compatible API. | Yes Spaces. | Yes EU locations; partial S3 API coverage. |
| Managed backup service Scheduled backup and restore for instances or volumes managed by the provider. | Yes | Yes Server backups. |
| Managed database Provider-operated relational database service. | Yes | No |
| Networking | ||
| L4 load balancer (TCP/UDP) Transport-layer load balancing. | Yes | Partial TCP only (no UDP). |
| L7 load balancer (HTTP/HTTPS) Application-layer load balancing with HTTP health checks. | Yes | Yes |
| Reassignable static public IP Static public addresses that can be moved between resources (Floating/Reserved/Elastic IP). | Yes Reserved IPs. | Yes |
| Private networks / VPC Isolated tenant networks with custom CIDR ranges. | Yes | Yes |
| Virtual router with NAT Managed router or NAT gateway for egress and inter-subnet routing, including static routes. | Unverified | No Network routes are supported; NAT requires a self-managed gateway server. |
| Security groups / cloud firewall Stateful, API-managed network access rules. | Yes Cloud Firewalls. | Yes Stateful firewalls. |
| Security & auditing | ||
| Control-plane audit logging A provider service that records management (API/console) operations against cloud resources. | Unverified | Unverified |
| User identity attribution in audit events Each audit event identifies the authenticated principal that performed the operation. | Unverified | Unverified |
Pricing and GPUs
| Provider | NVIDIA H100 | NVIDIA H200 | NVIDIA L40S | Türkiye infrastructure |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DigitalOcean | Generally available GPU Droplet — NVIDIA HGX H100 $4.410 / GPU-h 1× or 8× H100 80 GB; 1× plan with 20 vCPU and 240 GiB RAM. | Generally available GPU Droplet — NVIDIA HGX H200 $4.470 / GPU-h 1× or 8× H200 141 GB; 1× plan with 24 vCPU and 240 GiB RAM. | Generally available GPU Droplet — NVIDIA L40S $1.570 / GPU-h 1× L40S 48 GB with 8 vCPU and 64 GiB RAM. | No |
| Hetzner | Not offered | Not offered | Not offered | No |
Prices are shown in the currency each provider publishes; no exchange-rate conversion is applied.
Benchmarks
Sources
- [1] Droplet Pricing (DigitalOcean Documentation) — DigitalOcean Official documentation accessed:
- [2] GPU Droplets Pricing — DigitalOcean Official documentation accessed:
- [3] Regional availability — DigitalOcean Official documentation accessed:
- [4] Hetzner Cloud — Hetzner Official documentation accessed:
- [5] Object Storage overview (Hetzner Docs) — Hetzner Official documentation accessed:
- [6] Dedicated servers with GPU (GEX) — Hetzner Official documentation accessed:
- [7] Hetzner Cloud Review 2026 — C9 Group Secondary source accessed:
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