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Google Cloud vs DigitalOcean: services, regions and GPUs
Updated: · Comparison generated from structured data
Direct answer
Choosing between Google Cloud and DigitalOcean depends first on location, required services and GPU access. 4 documented capabilities are only available on Google Cloud and 2 only on DigitalOcean. Measured performance is covered on the benchmark pages.
Executive summary
Google Cloud and DigitalOcean document 22 and 20 of the same 26 criteria respectively, with 18 capabilities in common. Google Cloud bills per-second and DigitalOcean bills per-second. Google Cloud has an announced Türkiye region; DigitalOcean has no infrastructure in Türkiye. Google Cloud offers H100, H200; DigitalOcean offers H100, H200, L40S.
Key findings
- 01 Capabilities documented only by Google Cloud: Dedicated / single-tenant resources, Virtual router with NAT, Control-plane audit logging, User identity attribution in audit events.
- 02 Capabilities documented only by DigitalOcean: S3-compatible object storage, NVIDIA L40S instances.
Overview
| Google Cloud | DigitalOcean | |
|---|---|---|
| Headquarters | Mountain View, United States | New York, United States |
| Operator | Google LLC | DigitalOcean Holdings, Inc. |
| Regions | Global regions; a Türkiye region has been announced (with Turkcell) but is not yet open. | Regions in North America, Europe (Amsterdam, Frankfurt, London), Asia and Australia; none in Türkiye. |
| Billing model | Per second — Compute Engine VMs are billed per second with a one-minute minimum; sustained- and committed-use discounts apply to eligible machine types. | 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. |
| Documented capabilities | 22 / 26 | 20 / 26 |
| Technologies | Kubernetes (GKE), Terraform, Cloud Storage XML API | Kubernetes (DOKS), S3 API (Spaces), Terraform |
Availability and regions
Google Cloud
- Frankfurt europe-west3 Generally available
- Türkiye (announced) turkiye-announced Coming soon
DigitalOcean
- Frankfurt fra1 Generally available
- Amsterdam ams3 Generally available
- London lon1 Generally available
Features
| Criterion | Google Cloud | DigitalOcean |
|---|---|---|
| Data residency | ||
| Infrastructure located in Türkiye Generally available compute and storage capacity physically located in Türkiye (full region or local zone). | Planned Announced November 2025; not yet open. | 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 with a one-minute minimum. | Yes Per-second (60 s / $0.01 minimum). |
| Dedicated / single-tenant resources Dedicated hosts, bare metal or organisation-dedicated cloud capacity. | Yes Sole-tenant nodes. | Partial Dedicated CPU Droplets; no single-tenant hosts. |
| NVIDIA H100 instances On-demand or reservable instances with NVIDIA H100 GPUs. | Yes | Yes |
| NVIDIA H200 instances On-demand or reservable instances with NVIDIA H200 GPUs. | Yes | Yes |
| NVIDIA L40S instances On-demand or reservable instances with NVIDIA L40S GPUs. | No | Yes |
| 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 | Yes |
| Kubernetes node autoscaling Worker node count scales automatically within configured limits. | Yes | Yes |
| Kubernetes LoadBalancer integration Services of type LoadBalancer provision a provider load balancer automatically. | Yes | Yes |
| Kubernetes storage classes (CSI) Persistent volumes provisioned dynamically through a provider storage class. | Yes | Yes |
| Storage & data | ||
| Block storage volumes Persistent, attachable and expandable block volumes. | Yes | Yes |
| Volume snapshots Point-in-time snapshots of block volumes. | Yes | Yes |
| S3-compatible object storage Object storage reachable through the S3 API or an S3-compatible API. | Partial XML API interoperability with HMAC keys; not full S3 API parity. | Yes Spaces. |
| Managed backup service Scheduled backup and restore for instances or volumes managed by the provider. | Yes | Yes |
| Managed database Provider-operated relational database service. | Yes | Yes |
| Networking | ||
| L4 load balancer (TCP/UDP) Transport-layer load balancing. | Yes | Yes |
| 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 Static external IP addresses. | Yes Reserved IPs. |
| 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. | Yes Cloud Router and Cloud NAT. | Unverified |
| Security groups / cloud firewall Stateful, API-managed network access rules. | Yes VPC firewall rules and policies. | Yes Cloud Firewalls. |
| Security & auditing | ||
| Control-plane audit logging A provider service that records management (API/console) operations against cloud resources. | Yes Cloud Audit Logs. | Unverified |
| User identity attribution in audit events Each audit event identifies the authenticated principal that performed the operation. | Yes | Unverified |
Pricing and GPUs
| Provider | NVIDIA H100 | NVIDIA H200 | NVIDIA L40S | Türkiye infrastructure |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google Cloud | Generally available A3 High / A3 Mega Up to 8 H100 GPUs per VM; zone availability varies. | Generally available A3 Ultra 8 H200 GPUs per VM; zone availability varies. | Not offered | Announced |
| 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 |
Prices are shown in the currency each provider publishes; no exchange-rate conversion is applied.
Benchmarks
Sources
- [1] New Google Cloud region coming to Türkiye — Google Cloud Official documentation accessed:
- [2] GPU locations — Compute Engine — Google Cloud Official documentation accessed:
- [3] Cloud Audit Logs overview — Google Cloud Official documentation accessed:
- [4] Droplet Pricing (DigitalOcean Documentation) — DigitalOcean Official documentation accessed:
- [5] GPU Droplets Pricing — DigitalOcean Official documentation accessed:
- [6] Regional availability — DigitalOcean Official documentation accessed:
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