Staxly

Zed vs DigitalOcean

High-performance code editor, built in Rust, with AI + collaboration
vs. The developer cloud — Droplets, Kubernetes, Managed DBs, App Platform

Zed editor ↗Try DigitalOcean ($200 credit) ↗

Pricing tiers

Zed

Free
$0. Full editor, extensions, collaboration. AI assistant with BYO API key or limited free tier.
Free
Zed Pro (trial)
$0 limited trial. Zed-hosted AI with Claude/GPT, 150 interactions/mo on Sonnet-tier models.
$0 base (usage-based)
BYO API Key
$0 for Zed. Full AI assistant with your own Claude / GPT / Gemini / Ollama keys — passthrough cost only.
$0 base (usage-based)
Zed Pro
$10/user/mo. 500 Claude Sonnet interactions + unlimited edit-predictions, priority routing.
$10/mo
Zed Business
$20/user/mo. 1,000+ Claude Sonnet interactions, org-level billing, priority support.
$20/mo
Zed editor ↗

DigitalOcean

Functions (Serverless)
Free 90k GB-sec/month. $0.0000185 per GB-sec after.
$0 base (usage-based)
App Platform — Free
Static sites free forever. 3 static sites per account.
Free
Droplet — Basic 512MB
Shared CPU, 512 MB RAM, 10 GB SSD, 500 GiB transfer. Cheapest starting tier.
$4/mo
Spaces Object Storage
$5/month — 250 GB storage + 1 TB outbound. S3-compatible.
$5/mo
App Platform — Basic
$5/month per app. 512 MB RAM, 1 vCPU, 1 GB bandwidth.
$5/mo
Droplet — Basic 1GB
Shared CPU, 1 GB RAM, 25 GB SSD.
$6/mo
Kubernetes (DOKS)
Starts at $12/month (1 node). Control plane free.
$12/mo
Droplet — Basic 2GB
1 vCPU, 2 GB RAM, 50 GB SSD, 2 TB transfer.
$12/mo
Load Balancer
$12/month. Supports HTTP/3 + Let's Encrypt.
$12/mo
Managed Postgres — Basic
1 GB RAM, 1 vCPU, 10 GB SSD. Single node.
$15/mo
Droplet — CPU Optimized
2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM dedicated. Best for CPU-bound workloads.
$42/mo
Enterprise
Custom. Volume discounts, dedicated support.
Custom
Try DigitalOcean ($200 credit) ↗

Free-tier quotas head-to-head

Comparing free on Zed vs functions on DigitalOcean.

MetricZedDigitalOcean
No overlapping quota metrics for these tiers.

Features

Zed · 20 features

  • Agent Panel — Multi-step AI tasks with tool use.
  • AI Assistant — Inline edits + agent panel.
  • Channels (Multiplayer) — Real-time shared editing.
  • Editor — Core Rust-based editor.
  • Edit Prediction (Zeta) — Next-edit prediction model.
  • Extensions (WASM) — WASM-based extension system.
  • GitHub Copilot Support — Works alongside Copilot subscription.
  • Git Integration — Diff view, branches, blame.
  • Integrated Terminal — Built-in shell.
  • LSP Support — Works with all LSP language servers.
  • MCP Support — Connect to any MCP server.
  • Multibuffer — Edit multiple files in one view.
  • Remote Dev (SSH) — Edit remote filesystems natively.
  • Screen Share — Share editor view live.
  • Sub-16ms Latency — GPU-accelerated rendering.
  • Tasks — Configurable build/test/run tasks.
  • Themes — Built-in + community themes.
  • Tree-sitter Syntax — Incremental parsing for instant highlighting.
  • Vim Mode — First-class Vim/Helix bindings.
  • Voice Channels — Talk while pair programming.

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.
  • DigitalOcean GenAI Platform — Managed AI agents, model-as-a-service (Llama, Mistral), knowledge bases.
  • DNS — Free DNS hosting for your domains.
  • DOKS (Kubernetes) — Managed Kubernetes. Free control plane. Node auto-repair.
  • 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.

Developer interfaces

KindZedDigitalOcean
CLIzed CLI (shell integration)doctl CLI
SDK—godo (Go), pydo (official py), python-digitalocean
REST—DigitalOcean REST API
MCP—DigitalOcean MCP
OTHERCommand Palette (cmd+shift+p), Multiplayer / Channels, Remote Development (SSH), Zed AI Assistant, Zed Editor, Zed Extensions—
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Some links to Zed and DigitalOcean may be affiliate links — Staxly may earn a commission if you sign up through them, at no extra cost to you. Pricing is verified against vendor pages at publication time — reconfirm before buying.

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