Comparing DigitalOcean vs. Vultr as VPS hosting providers (2025)

DigitalOcean is an American cloud service provider headquartered in New York City. The company operates 15 globally distributed data centers and offers cloud infrastructure services primarily to developers, startups, and small to medium-sized businesses. It is known for its VPS offerings, Kubernetes-based container services, and serverless computing solutions.

Founded in 2012, DigitalOcean emerged from the TechStars startup accelerator and grew rapidly, becoming one of the first cloud-hosting providers to offer SSD-based virtual machines in 2013. The company expanded internationally, opened multiple data centers, and acquired several companies, including Nimbella, CSS-Tricks, and Cloudways. DigitalOcean went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2021 and continues to expand its infrastructure and product offerings, including GPU-based computing for AI workloads.

Vultr is a cloud computing provider offering high-performance virtual private servers (VPS), bare metal servers, Kubernetes, and cloud storage solutions. It focuses on affordability, ease of use, and global reach, with 32+ data centers worldwide.

Among other things, Vultr supports developers with an API, one-click application deployments, and a marketplace for preconfigured software.

Vultr competes with providers like DigitalOcean and Linode, appealing to developers, startups, and businesses seeking scalable cloud infrastructure at competitive pricing. The parent company behind Vultr is Constant.