DigitalOcean vs Modal
- GPUs
- 9 11
- Cheapest GPU
- $0.76/hr $0.59/hr
- Price wins
- 2/4 2/4
DigitalOcean and Modal split the 4 GPUs they both rent. Modal carries 2 more GPUs.
Developer cloud that rents GPU Droplets and managed AI services, billed by usage alongside its standard virtual machines.
Best for: Simple GPU VMs for small teams
Serverless GPU platform where code runs as functions for inference, batch jobs and training, billed per second with no commitments.
Best for: Serverless inference and batch jobs
Price by GPU
The 4 GPUs both rent. Cheapest live rate per GPU-hour, most powerful first. The cheaper side is in purple.
| GPU | DigitalOcean | Modal | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| NVIDIA B300 SXM 262GB | $11.19/hr | $7.10/hr | 58% |
| NVIDIA H100 SXM5 80GB | $4.41/hr | $3.95/hr | 12% |
| NVIDIA H200 SXM 141GB | $4.47/hr | $4.54/hr | 2% |
| NVIDIA L40S 48GB | $1.57/hr | $1.95/hr | 24% |
Prices last checked: DigitalOcean 4 Oct 2026, Modal 1 Oct 2026.
Only on one side
Only on DigitalOcean 5
Company facts
| Fact | DigitalOcean | Modal |
|---|---|---|
| Headquarters |  Broomfield, CO | New York City, United States |
| Type | GPU cloud | GPU cloud |
| GPUs priced | 9 | 11 |
| Fastest GPU | AMD Instinct MI350X OAM | NVIDIA B200 SXM 180GB |
| Services | n/a | Serverless GPU compute, inference, batch jobs, training, sandboxes |
| Pricing models | n/a | Pay-per-second, no commitments |
Compliance
Frameworks each provider states it holds, linked to its own statement. Not published means we found no statement, not that the provider fails it. Check the scope with the provider.
Pick your provider
Questions
- What is the difference between DigitalOcean and Modal?
- DigitalOcean: Developer cloud that rents GPU Droplets and managed AI services, billed by usage alongside its standard virtual machines. Modal: Serverless GPU platform where code runs as functions for inference, batch jobs and training, billed per second with no commitments.
- Is DigitalOcean cheaper than Modal?
- DigitalOcean and Modal split the 4 GPUs they both rent. Modal carries 2 more GPUs.
- How much does a NVIDIA B300 SXM 262GB cost on DigitalOcean and Modal?
- DigitalOcean charges $11.19 per GPU-hour and Modal charges $7.10 per GPU-hour, the cheapest live rate on each.
- Which GPUs can I rent on both DigitalOcean and Modal?
- 4 GPUs, including NVIDIA B300 SXM 262GB, NVIDIA H100 SXM5 80GB, NVIDIA H200 SXM 141GB, NVIDIA L40S 48GB.
- How are these prices compared?
- Each figure is the cheapest live rate per GPU-hour for that GPU. We use on-demand pricing where a provider sells it and fall back to community or reserved terms, labelled, where that is all they sell. Spot capacity is left out because it can be reclaimed. Rates are refreshed by our daily ingest.
How we define a live price: methodology.
