DigitalOcean vs Linode
The long-running unmanaged VPS duel, read from both providers' captured pricing, product and support pages: Droplets from $4 with per-second billing against Linode's $5 Nanode, phone support on every account and a $100 per instance managed add-on, plus the staging and managed WordPress gaps both captures share.
DigitalOcean and Linode, publishing under the Akamai Cloud name, sell the same thing: an unmanaged Linux server you patch and secure yourself, on a 99.99% uptime figure. DigitalOcean opens at $4 per month with per-second billing, a 60-second minimum and free monitoring; Linode opens at $5 with hours rounded up, half the egress overage rate, 24/7 phone support on every account and Linode Managed at $100 per instance as its paid management layer. Neither provider's pages state staging, managed WordPress or an included CDN, so readers arriving from shared hosting should weigh those shared gaps before either price tag.
By Sam Moreton
Researched
Which one for your use case
| Use case | Pick |
|---|---|
| Short-lived servers where billing granularity decides the bill | DigitalOcean |
| Anyone who wants a phone line included from the first server onwards | Linode |
| Self-managed boxes that still deserve free monitoring and alerts | DigitalOcean |
| Egress-heavy workloads priced by overage rate and entry allowance | Linode |
| Growth past $24 tiers on published monthly prices | Linode |
| Multi-user projects on one bill with two-factor authentication | DigitalOcean |
Testing overlap: Both providers are covered from their captured pricing, product, support and add-on pages, checked November 2026; no servers were provisioned on either platform and no performance figure is asserted here.
What the captured pages state, side by side
From the per-host feature audit, checked through 2026-11-04. Cells carry the date their source page was captured; gaps render as not stated rather than guessed.
| Dimension | DigitalOcean | Linode (Akamai) |
|---|---|---|
| Entry price (cheapest published plan, trials excluded) | $4 per month (Basic 512 MiB) Checked 2026-11-04. | $5 per month (Nanode 1 GB) Checked 2026-11-04. |
| Price at the 1 GB RAM class | $6 per month (Basic 1 GiB: 1 GB RAM, 25 GB, 1000 GB) Checked 2026-11-04. | $5 per month (Nanode 1 GB: 1 GB RAM, 25 GB, 1000 GB) Checked 2026-11-04. |
| Trial | Not stated on the captured DigitalOcean pages. | Not stated on the captured Linode (Akamai) pages. |
| Apps | Pre-configured 1-Click Apps for LAMP, Docker, WordPress and more; you are charged for the underlying compute. Full choice of Linux distributions (Ubuntu, CentOS, Debian, Fedora, CoreOS) and custom images. Checked 2026-11-04. | A cloud marketplace is referenced in the captured pages' navigation (cloud marketplace, Developer apps); no application catalog, one-click app list or managed app runtime is stated on the captured pages. Checked 2026-11-04. |
| Backups | Paid extra, not included: disk images of Droplets created automatically; percentage-based plans set at 20% of Droplet cost (weekly) or 30% (daily), usage-based plans start at $0.01/GiB per month with frequencies up to every 4 hours and retention from 3 days to 6 months. You can choose daily or weekly and customize the backup window; automatic backups can be converted into snapshots to keep them indefinitely; backups cannot be downloaded. Checked 2026-11-04. | Paid add-on for compute instances: pricing starts at $2 per month for a 1 GB shared CPU compute instance, with additional rates by compute plan. Automated daily, weekly, and biweekly backups with access to up to 14 days of automated backups; file-based solution supporting unencrypted ext3 and ext4 with restoration on ext4; manual backups for individual files; provisioning via Cloud Manager or Linode CLI with auto-enroll of new instances; programmatic management via the Linode API; availability across all regions; off-site copies downloadable. The Backups service is automatically enabled on all Linodes when you enroll in Linode Managed. Checked 2026-11-04. |
| Migrations | Self-service only: the support FAQ states there are guides to help you migrate your data from your previous provider. No managed migration service is stated on the captured pages. Checked 2026-11-04. | No managed or self-serve migration product is stated on the captured pages; the pricing hub lists a cloud consulting and migration service sold by consultation (contact us), with no price stated. Checked 2026-11-04. |
| CDN | No CDN is included with Droplets. The captured products page states a built-in CDN only inside Spaces Object Storage, a separate product ('S3-compatible Spaces Object Storage with a built-in CDN to minimize page load times'). Checked 2026-11-04. | No CDN, edge cache or content delivery feature is stated as included with compute instances anywhere on the captured compute, pricing, backups, managed or support pages. Checked 2026-11-04. |
| Vertical scaling | Resize a Droplet to a larger plan; Droplets cannot be resized to smaller plans, but you can migrate your data to a smaller Droplet. Checked 2026-11-04. | You can resize your VM up or down at any time (pricing hub FAQ); the CPU product page says to easily resize up and down when your application needs more or less compute resources. RAM and local disk storage are bundled into the specific VM size, so more of those requires resizing to the next tier; auxiliary storage comes from attaching Block Storage volumes or using Object Storage. Checked 2026-11-04. |
| Horizontal scaling | Scale horizontally with many Droplets across globally distributed data centers, each with the 99.99% uptime SLA. Load Balancers are listed as a separate tool to distribute traffic across a group of Droplets. Checked 2026-11-04. | NodeBalancers are a separately priced load balancing product (the pricing hub describes load balancing that matches your workload so you only pay for what you need, with no figures captured), and LKE provides managed Kubernetes without a per-cluster fee, to which compute nodes can be added. No automatic horizontal autoscaling of instances is stated on the captured pages. Checked 2026-11-04. |
| Control panel | DigitalOcean control panel: create a Droplet in a few clicks, choose OS, plan and datacenter region, up and running in under a minute. No hosting control panel is included; you can install cPanel and WHM yourself on AlmaLinux, Rocky and Ubuntu Droplets. Checked 2026-11-04. | Cloud Manager, the vendor's web UI, plus API, CLI and developer tool integrations; backups are provisioned via Cloud Manager or the Linode CLI; Linode Managed is enrolled from the Account/Settings tab of Akamai Cloud Manager. No hosting control panel is included by default: cPanel/WHM is stated as free only for Linode Managed customers, with expert guidance on installation. Checked 2026-11-04. |
| Team features | Team management: collaborate on projects with unlimited users, two-factor authentication, and all projects on a single bill; team collaboration is built into DigitalOcean from sign-up. Checked 2026-11-04. | Not stated on the captured Linode (Akamai) pages. |
| Support channels | support tickets via the support portal, email support. Paid: Developer ($24 per month: support tickets via the support portal, email support); Standard ($99 per month: support tickets via the support portal, email support, live chat in the support portal, 24/7); Premium ($999 per month: support tickets via the support portal, email support, live chat in the support portal, 24/7, dedicated Slack channel during business hours, staffed by your Solution Architect, video calls). Checked 2026-11-04. | support tickets, phone support, day and night, in English (United States, Brazil, China, Japan, India and global numbers), email (support@linode.com, account credential recovery and general inquiries), Community Q&A, service status dashboard. Checked 2026-11-04. |
| Benchmarks | Not tested by Kite: no benchmark runs exist yet (see the methodology). | Not tested by Kite: no benchmark runs exist yet (see the methodology). |
What the published data says
- Lower entry price: DigitalOcean's Basic 512 MiB starts at $4 per month against Linode (Akamai)'s Nanode 1 GB at $5 per month (2026-11-04). Fit when budget leads; equal-price value is not scored here.
- DigitalOcean sells support escalation above the standard tier: Developer at $24 per month, Standard at $99 per month, Premium at $999 per month (2026-11-04).
DigitalOcean: what the captured pages do not state, and the sources
- Staging environments are not stated anywhere on the captured pages; the products page only calls cloud firewalls 'perfect for staging and production deployments', which is not a staging feature for sites.
- No CDN is included with Droplets; the only CDN statement on the captured pages is the built-in CDN of Spaces Object Storage, a separate product whose pricing was not captured.
- No managed WordPress or application-level managed layer: the FAQ states Droplets are IaaS and the core offering is unmanaged, you manage the operating system, applications and data.
- No managed migration service is stated; the support FAQ references self-serve guides for migrating data from a previous provider only.
- No free trial is stated: the pricing FAQ says DigitalOcean often provides promotional credits for new users, with no amount or duration stated.
- App Platform is referenced on the pricing page (build and deploy 3 static sites for free) but its pricing was not captured, so no App Platform plans are entered.
- Managed Databases, GPU Droplets, Kubernetes, Functions, Spaces, Load Balancers, Volumes and other navigation products were not captured and are not audited here.
- The 99.99% SLA figure is stated, but the SLA's compensation or service-credit terms are not on the captured pages (the docs navigation links a separate Service-Level Agreements page that was not captured).
- Retention for percentage-based backups (20% weekly or 30% daily) is not stated; only the usage-based range of 3 days to 6 months is stated.
- v5 Droplets publish no tier table on the captured page, only workload examples with starting hourly rates; no fixed-price v5 plans are entered.
- Team roles, permissions and per-resource access controls are not detailed on the captured pages, only unlimited users, two-factor authentication and single-bill projects.
- The support FAQ states DigitalOcean support plans do not apply to Cloudways or Paperspace and that each team needs its own plan; the relationship between DigitalOcean and Cloudways is otherwise not described on the captured pages.
- The main pricing page's per-product pricing tables did not render in the text capture; only its global pricing bullets and FAQ were captured, Droplet pricing was captured on the dedicated Droplets pricing page instead.
- Datacenter lists differ between captured pages: the products page includes Memphis, the Droplets pricing FAQ list does not.
- The support FAQ states an unlimited number of domains and websites can be served from one Droplet, but no captured page states a visit figure or any metering, so plans carry RAM/disk/transfer only and no visit claim.
- Budget-Friendly Cloud Server Pricing | DigitalOcean, DigitalOcean (checked 2026-11-04)
- Droplet Pricing | DigitalOcean, DigitalOcean (checked 2026-11-04)
- DigitalOcean Droplets | Scalable Cloud Compute Starting at $4/mo, DigitalOcean (checked 2026-11-04)
- Support Plans | DigitalOcean Documentation, DigitalOcean (checked 2026-11-04)
- Support Home | DigitalOcean Documentation, DigitalOcean (checked 2026-11-04)
Linode (Akamai): what the captured pages do not state, and the sources
- Staging environments are not stated on any captured page; no staging, cloning or site-preview feature appears in the captured compute, pricing, backups, managed or support pages.
- No managed WordPress or application-level managed hosting is stated: Linode Managed covers infrastructure monitoring and response, free cPanel/WHM guidance, and automatic enablement of the Backups service; nothing about web application management.
- Team and user management features (seats, roles, permissions, per-user billing) are not stated on the captured pages.
- No CDN or edge-cache feature is stated as included with compute instances.
- Migration tooling: no self-serve or free migration service is stated; the only migration statement is a cloud consulting and migration service sold by consultation with no price.
- Instance storage drive type (SSD, NVMe) is not stated on the captured pages; the CPU product page says only that local storage is included, and the pricing tables list storage sizes without a drive type.
- Backup pricing beyond the $2 per month starting figure was not captured; the per-plan rate schedule behind the See pricing link was not fetched.
- NodeBalancers pricing is not stated on the captured pages; the pricing hub card gives no figures.
- The 99.99% uptime guarantee is stated, but compensation, service credits or claim terms are not on the captured pages.
- The relationship between the published monthly and hourly figures (for example whether the monthly price caps hourly accrual) is not stated on the captured pages.
- Captured prices are the page's default North America region view; the page states pricing for some plans varies by region, and the Europe, Asia-Pacific, South America and Jakarta tables were not captured.
- G8 Dedicated CPU publishes hourly prices only, with 0 TB bundled transfer, so no G8 tier is entered as a monthly-priced plan.
- G7 Dedicated tiers are published ($43.00 to $5,530.00 per month) but not entered tier-by-tier; only the G6 line is entered.
- GPU, Accelerated Compute, Kubernetes (LKE), App Platform, Managed Databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL, Valkey), Object Storage, Block Storage, Images, DNS Manager, Cloud Firewall, Private Networking and NodeBalancers are named on the captured pages without captured pricing; Object Storage and Block Storage state per-GB pricing models without figures.
- No free trial is stated; promotional credits (the US$100 sign-up offer and up to US$5,000 for enterprise customers) are stated but their Promotion Redemption Rules and Conditions were not captured.
- Refund policy and email/SMTP sending policy are not stated on the captured pages.
- Longview Pro and extra IPs are referenced as billable active services in the powered-off VM FAQ, with no prices captured.
- Support response-time commitments are not stated; the 24/7/365 wording comes from the CPU product page and the day and night, in English wording from the support page.
- G8 dedicated instances publish hourly prices only, with no monthly figure on the captured CPU pricing page, so no monthly-graded entry exists for that line here.
- Cloud Computing Pricing | Akamai, Akamai (Linode) (checked 2026-11-04)
- Cloud CPU pricing | Akamai, Akamai (Linode) (checked 2026-11-04)
- Compute | Shared CPU, Dedicated CPU, High Mem | Akamai, Akamai (Linode) (checked 2026-11-04)
- Akamai Cloud Customer Support | Akamai, Akamai (Linode) (checked 2026-11-04)
- 24/7 Infrastructure Monitoring, Linode Managed | Akamai, Akamai (Linode) (checked 2026-11-04)
- Cloud Backups | Simple and Secure Instance Backups | Akamai, Akamai (Linode) (checked 2026-11-04)
Open this comparison in the interactive tool to swap either side for any of the other audited hosts.
DigitalOcean and Linode have spent a decade selling the same buyer the same thing: a Linux server you configure, patch and secure yourself, billed from single digits. Both captured audits, dated November 2026, show unmanaged compute behind a web panel, an API and a command line, each on a 99.99% uptime figure. The differences that matter sit around the server: how finely the meter runs, what the ground-floor account includes, how far the published prices climb, and whether relief from self-management is for sale.
The doors and the ladders
DigitalOcean's captured Basic line starts at $4 monthly for a droplet of half a gibibyte of RAM, 10 GB of disk and 500 GiB of transfer. Linode's door is the Nanode 1 GB at $5, with 1 GB of RAM, 25 GB of disk and a full 1 TB of transfer. One rung up the order reverses: at 1 GB of RAM, Linode asks $5 against DigitalOcean's $6 for the same 25 GB disk and 1 TB allowance. The menus converge to the dollar in the middle: $12 for 2 GB, $24 for 4 GB and two cores, disks and transfer matching throughout.
The edges are where the shapes part. DigitalOcean's published tiers stop at $24; above that the v5 line is a configurator pricing each resource as you pick it, with hourly examples like $0.052 for a shared 2 vCPU, 4 GB shape and no tier table. Linode keeps publishing monthly rows far up: Shared to 192 GB at $1,152, G6 Dedicated from $36 to $4,608, High Memory from $60 to $960. One caveat: those figures are the page's default North America view, and the tables say some plans price differently per region.
How the meters run
DigitalOcean bills per second with a 60-second minimum, and bundled plans carry a monthly cap so a long-lived server never exceeds the flat price. Linode bills hourly with each hour rounded up, invoices monthly, and its FAQ says powered-off instances keep accruing charges alongside other active services. For a server that lives two afternoons, per-second accounting is the kinder meter. Neither states a free trial; Linode publishes US$100 in credits over 60 days, DigitalOcean's FAQ mentions promotional credits without an amount.
Egress is the second meter, and it leans Linode's way. The entry allowances differ, 500 GiB against 1 TB, and so do the overage rates: $0.01 per GiB on DigitalOcean against $0.005 per GB in the majority of Akamai Cloud regions on Linode, which also pools transfer across instances. Both pages carry self-flattering comparisons, up-to-50% hyperscaler savings on one and up-to-90% egress savings on the other; treat them as marketing. The printed rates are what to plan around.
Backups and the free monitoring split
Neither bundles backups. DigitalOcean sells a surcharge instead: a fifth of the Droplet price billed weekly, three tenths daily, or a pure meter at one cent per gibibyte per month with up-to-4-hour frequencies and 3-day to 6-month retention; the percentage plans state no retention. Linode's Backups start at $2 per month for a 1 GB instance, run daily, weekly or biweekly, keep up to 14 days and, unlike DigitalOcean's, produce downloadable off-site copies.
The monitoring split runs the other way: DigitalOcean includes metrics with alerting, cloud firewalls and DNS management at no charge, a real convenience on an unmanaged box. Linode's captured pages state no free monitoring; round-the-clock watchkeeping appears only inside the paid Managed service. Team features lean the same way: DigitalOcean states unlimited users, two-factor authentication and one bill; Linode's captures say nothing about seats or roles.
Support on the ground floor
Linode puts 24/7/365 email and phone support on every account, a team advertised with no tiers, no bots and no handoffs, phone numbers published for five countries plus global callers, and no response-time commitments stated. DigitalOcean's base support is tickets and email, answered within 24 hours by general staff. Speed then costs money: under 8 hours at $24 per month, under 2 hours plus 24/7 chat at $99, and under 30 minutes with Slack and video calls at $999. Response time follows the plan level, not the severity of the incident. One account rings a phone at 2am for free; the other sells you a contractual clock.
The $100 escape hatch
Linode Managed is the difference with no DigitalOcean counterpart in the captures. At $100 per instance per month, with no contract, it watches the URLs, IPs and TCP ports you configure around the clock, with vendor experts stepping in when a check fails; it hands over free cPanel/WHM licences and switches Backups on across every Linode on the account at no extra charge. It stops at infrastructure; nothing in the capture manages the site itself. DigitalOcean offers no management product at any price here; its paid plans buy response times, and the support FAQ notes they do not apply to Cloudways or Paperspace. When self-management stops being fun, one provider sells partial relief in place; the other, on this evidence, asks you to migrate.
What neither page sells
Read the two gap lists together and one silhouette appears. Neither provider states staging environments in any form. Neither sells a managed WordPress layer: DigitalOcean's 1-Click Apps install WordPress onto a Droplet you then run alone, and Linode's captures state no application catalogue, only a marketplace reference in navigation. Neither includes a CDN with compute, DigitalOcean's sitting inside the separate Spaces product. Neither publishes a done-for-you migration: DigitalOcean points at self-serve guides, Linode at a consulting engagement quoted by conversation. Both quote 99.99% uptime with no published compensation terms. A reader arriving from shared hosting, where staging, migration and a CDN are plan line items, should expect to build all of it themselves, on either side of the duel.
Where each one wins
DigitalOcean suits the experimenter and the automation shop: per-second billing under a monthly cap, free monitoring, firewalls and DNS, Terraform support, and a 13-city data centre list that names a London Droplet explicitly. Linode suits the operator who wants company: a phone line from the first server, egress at half the overage rate with double the entry allowance, monthly prices published up to $4,608 and beyond, and a $100 per instance route out of solo systems work. No overall winner is declared, because the audits describe two capable unmanaged platforms with different furniture.
If the shared gaps worry you, the managed middle ground is covered in Cloudways vs DigitalOcean and Cloudways vs Linode. The hosting comparison tool lines both providers up with every other audited host on this site's citation terms.
FAQ
Is DigitalOcean cheaper than Linode?
At the very bottom, yes: DigitalOcean's captured Basic line opens at $4 a month with half a gigabyte of memory, 10 GB of disk and 500 GiB of transfer, while Linode's smallest published instance, the Nanode 1 GB, is $5 (checked November 2026). One rung up the tables flip, with 1 GB of RAM at $5 on Linode against $6 on DigitalOcean over the same 25 GB disk and 1 TB of transfer. At 2 GB both publish $12, and at 4 GB both publish $24 with matching 80 GB disks and 4 TB allowances. The honest summary is that the middle menus converge, and the real cost differences sit in egress rates and add-ons rather than tier prices.
Does either provider include staging or managed WordPress?
No. Neither provider's captured pages state staging environments or any managed WordPress layer. DigitalOcean lists WordPress among its 1-Click Apps, which installs the software onto a Droplet you then run yourself, and Linode Managed covers infrastructure monitoring and response rather than applications. Anyone moving from shared hosting should expect to build staging themselves on either platform.
What does Linode Managed include for $100 per month?
Linode Managed costs $100 per instance per month with no contract, per the captured managed product page. It adds round-the-clock watchkeeping over the URLs, IPs and TCP ports you configure, with vendor experts responding when a check fails, free cPanel/WHM licences for Managed customers, and the Backups service switched on across every Linode on the account at no extra charge. It is an infrastructure service; nothing in the captured pages covers managing the site or application itself.
How do the two billing models differ?
DigitalOcean bills per second with a 60-second minimum, a policy its page dates to 1 January 2026, and caps bundled plans at the flat monthly price. Linode bills hourly with every hour rounded up, and its FAQ states that powered-off instances keep accruing charges along with other active services. A server that lives two afternoons costs meaningfully less under per-second accounting.
Which provider includes phone support?
Linode, on every account: its captured pages state 24/7/365 email and phone support for all customers, with no tiers and a community Q&A alongside. DigitalOcean's free support is tickets and email with a stated under-24-hour response; live chat arrives on the $99 per month Standard plan, and a sub-30-minute response with Slack and video access costs $999 per month.