DigitalOcean is one of the best-known developer clouds, with Droplets, managed databases, Kubernetes, App Platform, Spaces object storage, Functions and GPU instances, backed by a documentation library most providers cannot match. Raff Technologies runs the same shape of platform — VMs, managed databases, Kubernetes, object storage, Functions and Apps on one account — from a single us-east region. The two are close enough in scope that the comparison comes down to price per unit and which parts of the catalog you actually need. At the matched shape, a DigitalOcean Basic Droplet with 2 vCPU, 4 GB and 80 GB is $24/month; the identical Raff plan is $17.99.
DigitalOcean VPS and Raff at a glance
DigitalOcean sells four Droplet families. Basic uses shared vCPU from $4/month; CPU-Optimized, General Purpose and Memory-Optimized all use dedicated vCPU at different memory ratios. Every Droplet includes a metered transfer allowance — 500 GB at the entry plan rising to 11 TB — with overage at $0.01 per GiB.
Around the Droplet sits a deep catalog: Spaces object storage from $5/month with a built-in CDN, App Platform from $0/month, Managed Databases from $15/month covering PostgreSQL, MySQL, Valkey, MongoDB, Kafka and OpenSearch, Kubernetes from $12/month with a free control plane, Functions with 90,000 GiB-seconds free per month, block storage volumes, load balancers, and GPU Droplets. DigitalOcean also operates data centers across North America, Europe and Asia, and its tutorial library is a genuine asset that no comparison should pretend away.
Raff Technologies runs 15,000+ VMs for 3,000+ customers from us-east, with a 99.90% monthly uptime SLA backed by service credits, rated 4.5/5 on Trustpilot and 4.6/5 on G2. VMs run AMD EPYC with DDR5 ECC memory and NVMe storage in two lines: General Purpose with shared vCPU from $4.99/month, and CPU-Optimized with dedicated vCPU from $15.99/month, scaling to 16 vCPU and 32 GB. Every plan includes a 3 Gbps port with unmetered transfer, automated Daily or Weekly backup schedules, uncapped snapshots, firewall controls, private networking and full root access.
Raff's catalog covers managed PostgreSQL, MySQL, Valkey, ClickHouse and Kafka from $7.99/month, S3-compatible object storage at $7/month for 100 GB and 1 TB of egress, managed Kubernetes with a free control plane and workers from $9.99/month, Functions with a free monthly tier, block volumes at $0.08/GiB-month, and Raff Apps from $3/month.
DigitalOcean VPS pricing vs Raff pricing
DigitalOcean Basic Droplets use shared vCPU, which matches Raff General Purpose. The dedicated families match Raff CPU-Optimized. Both tables below compare like with like.
Shared vCPU: Raff General Purpose against DigitalOcean Basic
| Shape | Raff General Purpose | DigitalOcean Basic |
|---|---|---|
| 1 vCPU / 1 GB | $4.99 — 25 GB, unmetered | $6.00 — 25 GB, 1 TB transfer |
| 1 vCPU / 2 GB | $8.99 — 50 GB, unmetered | $12.00 — 50 GB, 2 TB transfer |
| 2 vCPU / 2 GB | $12.99 — 40 GB, unmetered | $18.00 — 60 GB, 3 TB transfer |
| 2 vCPU / 4 GB | $17.99 — 80 GB, unmetered | $24.00 — 80 GB, 4 TB transfer |
| 4 vCPU / 8 GB | $33.99 — 160 GB, unmetered | $48.00 — 160 GB, 5 TB transfer |
| 8 vCPU / 16 GB | $71.99 — 240 GB, unmetered | $96.00 — 320 GB, 6 TB transfer |
Three of those rows are identical on disk as well as cores and memory — 80 GB, 160 GB and 320 GB — which makes them unusually clean comparisons. Raff is 25% to 29% cheaper across the range.
Dedicated vCPU: Raff CPU-Optimized against DigitalOcean CPU-Optimized
| Shape | Raff CPU-Optimized | DigitalOcean CPU-Optimized |
|---|---|---|
| 2 vCPU / 4 GB | $36.99 — 80 GB | $42.00 — 25 GB |
| 4 vCPU / 8 GB | $72.99 — 120 GB | $84.00 — 50 GB |
| 8 vCPU / 16 GB | $144.99 — 180 GB | $168.00 — 100 GB |
Raff is 12% to 14% cheaper on dedicated vCPU, with two to three times the included disk at every shape.
DigitalOcean prices read from digitalocean.com on 2026-08-20. DigitalOcean also sells General Purpose and Memory-Optimized Droplets at higher memory ratios — from $63/month at 2 vCPU / 8 GB and $84/month at 2 vCPU / 16 GB — where Raff's closest plans are $27.99 and, above 32 GB, nothing at all.
Bandwidth cost math
This is where the two models diverge most. DigitalOcean meters transfer per Droplet and bills $0.01 per GiB beyond the allowance. Raff includes unmetered transfer on a 3 Gbps port.
| Monthly egress on a 2 vCPU / 4 GB VM | Raff | DigitalOcean Basic (4 TB included) |
|---|---|---|
| 2 TB | $17.99 | $24.00 |
| 4 TB | $17.99 | $24.00 |
| 8 TB | $17.99 | $24.00 + $40.96 = $64.96 |
| 20 TB | $17.99 | $24.00 + $163.84 = $187.84 |
At 20 TB the DigitalOcean bill is more than thirteen times Raff's. Below the allowance the gap is just the plan price; above it, the gap compounds. DigitalOcean does pool allowances across Droplets in an account, which softens this for fleets — but the per-GiB rate still applies once the pool is exhausted.
Automated backups
DigitalOcean sells Droplet backups as an add-on priced as a percentage of the Droplet cost, and snapshots per GB. Raff includes a free backup and snapshot storage pool — 50 GB per account plus 10–15% of each VM's disk — with Daily and Weekly schedules you configure, retention from 1 to 365 days, and uncapped snapshots. Storage above the pool is $0.06/GB-month.
DigitalOcean VPS performance vs Raff
Methodology
The only head-to-head data Raff holds against DigitalOcean is from May 2026, and it compared a dedicated-vCPU Raff benchmark VM against a shared-vCPU DigitalOcean Basic Droplet in a different region, single-pass. That class mismatch is disqualifying for a provider-level claim, so the numbers below are published as a record of that test window rather than as evidence that Raff General Purpose outperforms DigitalOcean Basic today. A matched re-run is outstanding.
Historical results — May 2026
| Benchmark | Raff (dedicated vCPU) | DigitalOcean Basic (shared vCPU) |
|---|---|---|
| sysbench CPU 1-thread | 1,663 events/s | 364 events/s |
| sysbench CPU 2-thread | 3,338 events/s | 744 events/s |
| Memory sequential read | 131,925 MiB/s | 36,709 MiB/s |
| Memory sequential write | 37,231 MiB/s | 16,449 MiB/s |
| Disk 4K random read QD32 | 74,562 IOPS | 40,679 IOPS |
| Disk 4K random write QD32 | 52,450 IOPS | 11,241 IOPS |
| Disk 1M sequential read | 2,376 MiB/s | 2,224 MiB/s |
| Redis SET | 157,356 req/s | 61,538 req/s |
| SQLite inserts | 331,110/s | 172,398/s |
What the results tell us
Read the gaps as what they are: a dedicated core will beat a shared core, and most of the CPU and Redis spread above is that difference rather than a platform difference. The one row worth attention is 1M sequential read at 2,376 against 2,224 MiB/s — nearly level, which suggests the two platforms' sequential disk throughput is comparable even when the CPU classes are not.
If you are choosing on measured performance, benchmark your own workload on both. Raff's General Purpose line is the honest comparison against a Basic Droplet, and that pairing has not been tested.
DigitalOcean vs Raff: features and reliability
Droplets and compute
DigitalOcean scales far past Raff: up to 48 vCPU and 96 GB on CPU-Optimized, 40 vCPU and 160 GB on General Purpose, and 32 vCPU with 256 GB on Memory-Optimized, plus GPU Droplets. Raff stops at 16 vCPU and 32 GB. Below that ceiling Raff resizes on demand — stop the VM, switch plan, restart, with the difference settled to the account balance and a resize API endpoint for CPU, RAM and disk.
Networking and bandwidth
Raff includes a 3 Gbps port with unmetered transfer, private networking, VPC, firewall controls and site-to-site VPN gateways. DigitalOcean includes metered transfer pooled across the account at $0.01/GiB overage, VPC, cloud firewalls, and load balancers from $12/month. Raff does not charge separately for load balancing.
Storage and object storage
Raff separates storage into VM disk, block volumes at $0.08/GiB-month, and S3-compatible object storage at $7/month for 100 GB with 1 TB of egress.
DigitalOcean Spaces is $5/month for 250 GiB with 1 TiB of transfer, with additional storage at $0.02/GiB and transfer at $0.01/GiB — and a built-in CDN at no extra charge. On object storage DigitalOcean is straightforwardly the better deal: more storage, lower price, and a CDN Raff does not offer.
Managed databases
Raff runs PostgreSQL, MySQL, Valkey, ClickHouse and Kafka from $7.99/month. DigitalOcean runs PostgreSQL, MySQL, Valkey, MongoDB, Kafka and OpenSearch from $15/month, with free daily backups and automated failover.
Raff is roughly 47% cheaper at entry and adds ClickHouse. DigitalOcean adds MongoDB and OpenSearch, which Raff does not offer at all.
Kubernetes and App Platform
Both offer managed Kubernetes with a free control plane — DigitalOcean from $12/month for worker capacity, Raff from $9.99/month.
App Platform is a real DigitalOcean advantage: it starts at $0/month with a free tier for static sites, against Raff Apps from $3/month. If you deploy small apps and static sites, DigitalOcean's free tier is not something Raff matches.
Functions
DigitalOcean Functions includes 90,000 GiB-seconds per month free, then $0.0000185 per GiB-second, with invocations not billed separately and a 100 ms minimum billed runtime per invocation. Raff Functions meters memory and active CPU separately, with a free tier of 100,000 GB-seconds and 10,000 vCPU-seconds per month, and bills warm invocations at 30% of the standard rate.
The free tiers are close, and the metering differs — DigitalOcean charges a flat GiB-second rate with a 100 ms floor, while Raff separates memory from CPU time and discounts warm starts.
The real difference is how long a function may run. DigitalOcean caps execution at 15 minutes, including initialization, with memory from 128 MB to 1 GB. Raff Functions permit runs of up to 24 hours. That is not a pricing difference, it is a capability one: batch imports, ETL jobs, media transcoding, large report generation and long-running scrapes cannot be written as DigitalOcean Functions at all, and have to become a Droplet or a Kubernetes job instead. On Raff they stay serverless.
Support and documentation
Raff provides 24/7 human support through live chat, with a first response typically under 10 minutes. No bots triaging you first, and no support tier to buy: a single $4.99 VM reaches the same engineers as a hundred production machines.
DigitalOcean's advantage here is not the ticket queue — it is the documentation and tutorial library, which is among the best in the industry and frequently the reason developers pick it. Raff has nothing comparable in breadth, and that is worth weighing if your team leans on published guides.
When you should choose DigitalOcean over Raff
- Object storage and CDN workloads — Spaces is $5/month for 250 GiB with 1 TiB transfer and a built-in CDN, against Raff's $7 for 100 GB and no CDN
- Free-tier app hosting — App Platform starts at $0/month; Raff Apps start at $3
- MongoDB or OpenSearch — both managed on DigitalOcean, neither offered by Raff
- Large or GPU workloads — up to 48 vCPU, 256 GB RAM and GPU Droplets, against Raff's 16 vCPU / 32 GB ceiling
- Multi-region deployment — data centers across North America, Europe and Asia against Raff's single us-east region
- Teams that learn from documentation — DigitalOcean's tutorial library is a genuine and hard-to-replicate asset
When you should choose Raff over DigitalOcean
- Lower cost on equivalent VMs — 25% to 29% below Basic Droplets on shared vCPU and 12% to 14% below CPU-Optimized, at identical disk on four of the six shared shapes (VPS for application hosting)
- Egress-heavy applications — unmetered transfer on a 3 Gbps port against $0.01/GiB overage; at 20 TB a month the DigitalOcean bill is over thirteen times higher
- Database-backed products — managed PostgreSQL, MySQL, Valkey, ClickHouse and Kafka from $7.99/month against $15 (VPS for databases)
- Block-storage-heavy workloads — $0.08/GiB-month, below DigitalOcean's volume pricing
- Backups without an add-on — Daily and Weekly schedules on a free storage pool with 1 to 365 day retention, against backups priced as a percentage of Droplet cost
- Long-running serverless jobs — Raff Functions run up to 24 hours against DigitalOcean's 15-minute cap, so batch imports, ETL and transcoding stay serverless instead of needing a Droplet
- Kubernetes at lower cost — free control plane on both, with Raff workers from $9.99/month against $12
Migrating from DigitalOcean to Raff
- Check your egress profile first — this is usually the largest single saving. If you are paying overage on Droplet transfer, that line disappears entirely on Raff.
- Match the Droplet family to the right Raff line — Basic maps to General Purpose, CPU-Optimized and General Purpose Droplets map to Raff CPU-Optimized. Matching by price rather than class will mislead you.
- Check the ceiling — Raff stops at 16 vCPU and 32 GB. Anything above that has no Raff equivalent.
- Plan Spaces and MongoDB separately — Spaces is cheaper than Raff object storage and includes a CDN, and Raff has no managed MongoDB or OpenSearch. Decide whether those stay on DigitalOcean.
- Move data in order — files with rsync or SCP, then database dumps into managed Postgres or MySQL, then assets to object storage. Keep the Droplet running throughout.
- Cut over and destroy, don't power off — lower DNS TTL beforehand, switch, then destroy the Droplet. A powered-off Droplet still bills.
About DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean Holdings, Inc. is a US cloud infrastructure provider headquartered in New York, founded in 2012 and listed on the NYSE, serving developers and small-to-medium businesses with Droplets, managed databases, Kubernetes, App Platform, Spaces object storage, Functions and GPU instances from data centers across North America, Europe and Asia. See DigitalOcean pricing for current rates.
Conclusion: DigitalOcean or Raff?
The comparison resolves across four axes:
- VM price — Raff wins, 25% to 29% below Basic Droplets and 12% to 14% below CPU-Optimized, at identical disk on four of the six shared shapes
- Bandwidth — Raff wins, unmetered on a 3 Gbps port against $0.01/GiB overage past the allowance
- Catalog breadth — DigitalOcean wins, with MongoDB, OpenSearch, GPU Droplets, a free App Platform tier, cheaper object storage with a CDN, and multiple regions
- Managed databases — Raff wins on price, from $7.99/month against $15, and adds ClickHouse
If you need MongoDB, OpenSearch, GPU capacity, a free app tier, cheap object storage with a CDN, or a region outside the United States, choose DigitalOcean — and it is a genuinely strong platform, not a straw man. If your users are in North America and your bill is dominated by VMs, egress and managed databases, choose Raff: the same workload costs materially less.
Raff runs 15,000+ VMs for 3,000+ customers and is rated 4.5/5 on Trustpilot, with a 99.90% monthly uptime SLA in writing.