Head-to-head, indicative as of Oct 2026. Prices change — always confirm on the vendor page.
Quick read: pick AWS Lambda if your workload is event-driven pipelines inside the aws ecosystem and its pricing model fits your traffic shape; pick DigitalOcean if you need simple predictable pricing for full servers. For anything latency-sensitive at the edge, cold start row is the tiebreaker.
| AWS Lambda | DigitalOcean | |
|---|---|---|
| Type | Function-as-a-Service | Droplets/App Platform |
| Free tier | 1M requests/month (always free) | App Platform starter; $200 credit promos |
| Paid pricing (indicative) | ~$0.20 per million requests + GB-seconds compute | Droplets from ~$4/mo; App Platform usage-based |
| Egress | ~$0.09/GB (billed) | Generous pooled transfer (1-10TB) |
| Cold start | ~100ms-1s (varies by runtime/VPC) | N/A (always-on droplets) |
| Regions | ~30+ regions | 13 datacenters |
| Best for | Event-driven pipelines inside the AWS ecosystem | Simple predictable pricing for full servers |
Try AWS Lambda Try DigitalOcean
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