DigitalOcean vs Fastly: pricing, quotas & features (2025)
The developer cloud — Droplets, Kubernetes, Managed DBs, App Platform
vs. Edge cloud platform — CDN + compute + security + observability
Data sourced from vendor documentation · Last updated May 2026
Summary
DigitalOcean and Fastly are both hosting platforms, addressing the same core use case with different implementation philosophies and trade-offs. Both offer a free tier, making it easy to prototype without a credit card. DigitalOcean's paid plans start at $4/month, lower than Fastly's entry point at $1500/month. Fastly has a broader documented feature set (16 vs 14 features). Budget-sensitive teams will find DigitalOcean easier to justify early on. All pricing and quota data below is sourced from DigitalOcean and Fastly's official documentation — not generated by AI or estimated.
DigitalOcean vs Fastly: Comparativa de precios, cuotas y características (2025)
En esta comparativa analizamos DigitalOcean y Fastly lado a lado — incluyendo precios mensuales, límites del tier gratuito, características técnicas, cuotas de uso (almacenamiento, transferencia, usuarios activos mensuales) y los interfaces de desarrollo disponibles. Todos los datos proceden de la documentación oficial de cada proveedor, no de respuestas generadas por IA.
DigitalOcean es una plataforma de la categoría hosting — The developer cloud — Droplets, Kubernetes, Managed DBs, App Platform. Ofrece 12 tiers de precio: Functions (Serverless) gratuito, App Platform — Free gratuito, Droplet — Basic 512MB desde $4/mes, Spaces Object Storage desde $5/mes. Su catálogo en Staxly documenta 14 características y 6 interfazes para desarrolladores.
Fastly pertenece a la categoría hosting — Edge cloud platform — CDN + compute + security + observability. Ofrece 6 tiers de precio: Free Trial gratuito, Pay-as-you-go gratuito, Basic Package desde $1500/mes, Starter Package desde $6000/mes. Su catálogo documenta 16 características y 7 interfazes para desarrolladores.
A continuación encontrarás los tiers de precio completos de ambas plataformas, una matriz de cuotas del tier gratuito (transferencia, almacenamiento, MAU, llamadas a la API y otros límites), el listado completo de características y los interfaces (CLI, SDKs, REST, GraphQL, MCP) disponibles para integrar cada servicio.
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Pricing tiers
DigitalOcean
Fastly
Free-tier quotas head-to-head
Comparing functions on DigitalOcean vs free on Fastly.
| Metric | DigitalOcean | Fastly |
|---|---|---|
| No overlapping quota metrics for these tiers. | ||
Features
DigitalOcean · 14 features
- App Platform — Heroku-style PaaS. Deploy from Git. Auto-HTTPS, auto-scale, zero-downtime deploy…
- Backups — Weekly automated backups (20% of Droplet cost). Manual snapshots.
- Block Storage Volumes — SSD block storage attachable to Droplets. Snapshot support.
- DNS — Free DNS hosting for your domains.
- DOKS (Kubernetes) — Managed Kubernetes. Free control plane. Node auto-repair.
- DigitalOcean GenAI Platform — Managed AI agents, model-as-a-service (Llama, Mistral), knowledge bases.
- Droplets — Virtual machines with shared or dedicated CPU. 20+ one-click Marketplace images.
- Functions — Serverless functions. Node, Python, Go, PHP, Ruby. Pay-per-execution.
- Load Balancers — Layer 4/7 load balancing with HTTP/3 + Let's Encrypt.
- Managed Databases — Postgres, MySQL, MongoDB, Redis, Kafka, OpenSearch, Valkey. Automated backups + …
- Marketplace — 300+ one-click Droplet + Kubernetes apps.
- Monitoring — Built-in metrics + alerts for Droplets, DBs, Load Balancers.
- Spaces — S3-compatible object storage with built-in CDN.
- VPC — Private networking. Free. Automatic default VPC per region.
Fastly · 16 features
- API Security — Schema validation + rate limiting.
- Bot Management — Behavioral bot detection + mitigation.
- CDN — Global Varnish-based CDN with VCL customization.
- Compute@Edge — Wasm-based serverless at 200+ POPs. Rust, JS, Go.
- DDoS Protection — Included on all plans.
- Fanout (WebSockets) — Persistent connection fan-out at edge.
- Image Optimization — On-the-fly resize/format/quality.
- Instant Purge — <150ms global cache invalidation.
- KV Store (Config) — Edge key-value store for config.
- Live Streaming — HLS + DASH live video delivery.
- Log Streaming — Real-time logs to S3, Datadog, Splunk, Azure, GCS, Kafka.
- Managed TLS — Automated cert issuance + renewal.
- Next-Gen WAF — Signal Sciences acquired — runtime app protection.
- Real-Time Analytics — Sub-second log streaming + metrics.
- Secret Store — Encrypted secrets at edge.
- Shield POP — Origin shield to reduce origin load.
Developer interfaces
| Kind | DigitalOcean | Fastly |
|---|---|---|
| CLI | doctl CLI | Fastly CLI |
| SDK | godo (Go), pydo (official py), python-digitalocean | compute-go-starter, compute-js-starter, compute-rust-starter |
| REST | DigitalOcean REST API | Fastly API |
| MCP | DigitalOcean MCP | — |
| OTHER | — | Compute@Edge (Wasm), VCL (Varnish) |
Key takeaways
- Both DigitalOcean and Fastly offer a free tier — DigitalOcean ("Functions (Serverless)") and Fastly ("Free Trial") — with no credit card required to start.
- The entry-level paid plan is $4/month for DigitalOcean (Droplet — Basic 512MB) vs. $1500/month for Fastly (Basic Package).
- Fastly has a broader documented feature set (16 features) vs. DigitalOcean (14 features) in Staxly's catalog.
- Developer integrations differ: only DigitalOcean offers MCP; only Fastly offers OTHER.
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