GPU cloud · head to head

DigitalOcean GPU Droplets vs Lambda

What each costs, whether there's a free plan, and what each is best for, from prices checked on their own sites.

DigitalOcean GPU Droplets and Lambda at a glance
Fact	DigitalOcean GPU Droplets	Lambda
From	$0.76/hr	$2.29/hr
Free plan	No · New-account credit; GPU use not confirmed	No · No
Best for	On-demand GPU Droplets (virtual machines) from DigitalOcean, which now includes Paperspace.	GPU cloud focused on NVIDIA data-centre GPUs for training and inference.
Checked	Oct 17, 2026	Oct 17, 2026
Website	Visit	Visit

The difference in short

DigitalOcean GPU Droplets costs less to start: $0.76/hr against $2.29/hr for Lambda.
Neither has a free plan; you pay from the start.

DigitalOcean GPU Droplets plans and prices
Plan	Price	Specs / includes	Notes
HGX H200 141GB	$4.47/hr	H200 (HGX) · 24 vCPU · 240 GB RAM	Per GPU. 1 or 8 GPUs per Droplet. vCPU/RAM as listed for the Droplet (RAM 240 GiB). 720 GiB NVMe boot disk + 5 TiB NVMe scratch, 15,000 GiB transfer.
HGX H100 80GB	$4.41/hr	H100 (HGX) · 20 vCPU · 240 GB RAM	Per GPU. 1 or 8 GPUs per Droplet. Page says 'NVIDIA HGX H100' and does not say SXM explicitly. RAM 240 GiB.
L40S 48GB	$1.57/hr	8 vCPU · 64 GB RAM	1 GPU per Droplet. RAM 64 GiB, 500 GiB NVMe boot disk, 10,000 GiB transfer.
RTX 6000 Ada 48GB	$1.57/hr	8 vCPU · 64 GB RAM	1 GPU per Droplet. RAM 64 GiB.
RTX 4000 Ada 20GB	$0.76/hr	8 vCPU · 32 GB RAM	1 GPU per Droplet. RAM 32 GiB.
AMD Instinct MI300X 192GB	$2.59/hr	AMD MI300X · 20 vCPU · 240 GB RAM	AMD, not NVIDIA. Per GPU, 1 or 8 GPUs per Droplet. MI325X 256GB is $3.80/GPU/hr (20 vCPU, 164 GiB RAM).

Lambda plans and prices
Plan	Price	Specs / includes	Notes
B200 180GB SXM6 (1x instance)	$6.99/hr	B200 SXM6 · 26 vCPU · 360 GB RAM	Per GPU, 1x configuration (26 vCPU, 360 GiB RAM, 2.75 TiB SSD). Cheaper per GPU in bigger configs: 2x $6.89, 4x $6.79, 8x $6.69 (8x instance = 208 vCPU, 2900 GiB RAM). RAM is shown in GiB.
H100 80GB SXM (1x instance)	$4.29/hr	H100 SXM · 26 vCPU · 225 GB RAM	Per GPU, 1x configuration (26 vCPU, 225 GiB RAM, 2.75 TiB SSD). 2x $4.19, 4x $4.09 per GPU.
H100 80GB SXM (8x instance)	$3.99/hr	H100 SXM · 26 vCPU · 225 GB RAM	Per GPU in an 8-GPU instance. vCPU and RAM are the exact per-GPU share of the instance totals (208 vCPU / 8, 1800 GiB / 8). 22 TiB SSD per instance.
H100 80GB PCIe (1x instance)	$3.29/hr	H100 PCIe · 26 vCPU · 225 GB RAM	Per GPU, 1x configuration only (26 vCPU, 225 GiB RAM, 1 TiB SSD).
A100 80GB SXM (8x instance)	$2.79/hr	A100 SXM · 30 vCPU · 225 GB RAM	Per GPU in an 8-GPU instance; the 80GB A100 appears only in the 8x tab. vCPU and RAM are the exact per-GPU share of 240 vCPU / 1800 GiB. A100 40GB (SXM or PCIe) is $1.99/GPU/hr.
GH200 96GB (1x instance)	$2.29/hr	64 vCPU · 432 GB RAM	Per GPU, 1x configuration (64 vCPU, 432 GiB RAM, 4 TiB SSD).

Cheapest first where the prices compare.

Which is cheaper, DigitalOcean GPU Droplets or Lambda?

DigitalOcean GPU Droplets costs less to start: $0.76/hr against $2.29/hr for Lambda. Prices checked Oct 17, 2026 on each company's own site.

Do DigitalOcean GPU Droplets and Lambda have a free plan?

DigitalOcean GPU Droplets: No free plan. New-account credit; GPU use not confirmed. Lambda: No, we found no free plan or trial for Lambda.

What else should I compare with DigitalOcean GPU Droplets and Lambda?

Other GPU cloud options we've checked: RunPod ($0.34/hr), TensorDock ($0.35/hr), Vast.ai ($0.49/hr), Modal ($1.10/hr).

Built from the prices and facts we checked on each company's own site. We haven't tested either hands-on.How we work