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Microsoft Azure vs DigitalOcean: services, regions and GPUs
Updated: · Comparison generated from structured data
Direct answer
Choosing between Microsoft Azure and DigitalOcean depends first on location, required services and GPU access. 4 documented capabilities are only available on Microsoft Azure and 3 only on DigitalOcean. Measured performance is covered on the benchmark pages.
Executive summary
Microsoft Azure and DigitalOcean document 21 and 20 of the same 26 criteria respectively, with 17 capabilities in common. Microsoft Azure bills mixed and DigitalOcean bills per-second. Microsoft Azure has no infrastructure in Türkiye; DigitalOcean has no infrastructure in Türkiye. Microsoft Azure offers H100, H200; DigitalOcean offers H100, H200, L40S.
Key findings
- 01 Capabilities documented only by Microsoft Azure: Dedicated / single-tenant resources, Virtual router with NAT, Control-plane audit logging, User identity attribution in audit events.
- 02 Capabilities documented only by DigitalOcean: Per-second or per-minute billing, S3-compatible object storage, NVIDIA L40S instances.
Overview
| Microsoft Azure | DigitalOcean | |
|---|---|---|
| Headquarters | Redmond, United States | New York, United States |
| Operator | Microsoft Corporation | DigitalOcean Holdings, Inc. |
| Regions | Global regions; no announced region in Türkiye. Nearest European regions include Germany West Central and Italy North. | Regions in North America, Europe (Amsterdam, Frankfurt, London), Asia and Australia; none in Türkiye. |
| Billing model | Mixed — Usage-based pay-as-you-go with service-specific meters; reservations and savings plans available. Billing granularity for virtual machines is not recorded here as verified. | 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 | 21 / 26 | 20 / 26 |
| Technologies | Azure Resource Manager, Bicep, Terraform | Kubernetes (DOKS), S3 API (Spaces), Terraform |
Availability and regions
Microsoft Azure
- Germany West Central germanywestcentral Generally available
- Italy North italynorth Generally available
DigitalOcean
- Frankfurt fra1 Generally available
- Amsterdam ams3 Generally available
- London lon1 Generally available
Features
| Criterion | Azure | DigitalOcean |
|---|---|---|
| Data residency | ||
| Infrastructure located in Türkiye Generally available compute and storage capacity physically located in Türkiye (full region or local zone). | No No announced or launched region in Türkiye. | 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. | Unverified | Yes Per-second (60 s / $0.01 minimum). |
| Dedicated / single-tenant resources Dedicated hosts, bare metal or organisation-dedicated cloud capacity. | Yes Azure Dedicated Host. | 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 Azure Local only. | 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. | No Blob Storage uses its own API. | 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 public IP resources re-associable between NICs. | 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 Route tables and NAT Gateway. | Unverified |
| Security groups / cloud firewall Stateful, API-managed network access rules. | Yes | Yes Cloud Firewalls. |
| Security & auditing | ||
| Control-plane audit logging A provider service that records management (API/console) operations against cloud resources. | Yes Azure Monitor Activity Log. | 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft Azure | Generally available NC H100 v5 / ND H100 v5 NC H100 v5 with one or two H100 NVL GPUs; ND H100 v5 with eight H100 GPUs. | Generally available ND H200 v5 Eight H200 GPUs per VM. | Not offered L40S SKUs are documented for Azure Local / Azure Stack Hub (customer-site hardware). | No |
| 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] List of Azure regions — Microsoft Official documentation accessed:
- [2] New Azure Region — Turkey (Microsoft Community Hub response) — Microsoft Official documentation accessed:
- [3] Use GPUs in AKS on Azure Local (supported GPU models) — Microsoft Official documentation accessed:
- [4] Azure Monitor activity log — Microsoft Official documentation accessed:
- [5] Droplet Pricing (DigitalOcean Documentation) — DigitalOcean Official documentation accessed:
- [6] GPU Droplets Pricing — DigitalOcean Official documentation accessed:
- [7] Regional availability — DigitalOcean Official documentation accessed:
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