DigitalOcean
Easiest setup of any cloud provider. $200 free trial credit included.
We earn 10% of customer spend for 12 months if you sign up.
Plans & pricing
Verify current prices on DigitalOcean ↗Prices shown are community-verified as of April 2026. Click the provider link above to confirm current rates — pricing changes without notice.
| Plan | RAM | CPU / GPU | Price | Ollama use | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic 2GB | 2GB | 1 vCPU | $12 | Phi-3 Mini (3B only) | Get plan → |
| Basic 4GB Recommended | 4GB | 2 vCPU | $24 | 7B models (Q4_K_M) | Get plan → |
| Basic 8GB | 8GB | 4 vCPU | $48 | 14B models (Q4) | Get plan → |
| Premium 16GB | 16GB | 8 vCPU | $96 | 34B models (Q4) | Get plan → |
Community benchmarks
Measured by community members running real workloads. Numbers are tokens/second on the listed model.
Detailed pros & cons
What's good
The most generous trial of any provider we tested. At $24/mo for 4GB, you get 8 months free. Plenty of time to validate before spending real money.
DigitalOcean's tutorials library has thousands of guides, including Ollama-specific walkthroughs. Non-technical users can follow along step by step.
New York, San Francisco, Amsterdam, Singapore, London, Frankfurt, Toronto, Bangalore, Sydney. Pick the one closest to your users.
Full REST API with Terraform provider. If you're building a product on top of your AI stack, DigitalOcean's API is stable and well-documented.
Need a Postgres database or Redis cache next to your Ollama server? DigitalOcean's managed services are easy to add from the same console.
Watch out for
4GB Basic at $24 vs Hetzner CX22 at €5.89. The $200 credit masks this — once it expires, it's a significant cost difference.
GPU Droplets exist but are enterprise-only and expensive. For GPU inference, use RunPod instead.
First-timers who want documentation, support, and a $200 free trial. US-based users who need low-latency US data centres.
Budget-conscious users after the trial credit expires. Hetzner is 50%+ cheaper for the same specs.
Ollama setup guide for DigitalOcean
Step-by-step from account creation to first model response. Takes 15–20 minutes.
Create your account & claim the credit
Sign up via our referral link to get $200 free credit valid for 60 days. No catches — it covers 8 months of the 4GB Droplet plan.
Create a Droplet
Click 'Create' → 'Droplets'. Choose: • Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (best Ollama compatibility) • Your closest region (New York or San Francisco for US users) • Basic 4GB plan ($24/mo)
Add your SSH key
Upload your public SSH key (~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub) for passwordless login. If you don't have one: ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C 'your@email.com'
Connect and update
ssh root@YOUR_DROPLET_IP apt update && apt upgrade -y Takes ~2 minutes. Always update before installing anything.
Install Ollama
curl -fsSL https://ollama.com/install.sh | sh Ollama installs as a systemd service. Check it's running: systemctl status ollama
Pull a model
For code completion: ollama pull qwen2.5-coder:7b-instruct-q4_K_M For chat + RAG: ollama pull llama3.2:8b-instruct-q4_K_M ollama pull nomic-embed-text
Set up the firewall
DigitalOcean Console → Networking → Firewalls → Create Firewall. Add Inbound Rule: TCP, Port 11434, Source = Your IP. Assign the firewall to your Droplet. Never expose Ollama publicly without authentication.
Connect your editor or app
Continue.dev in VS Code: Ollama base URL = http://YOUR_IP:11434 AnythingLLM: Server URL = http://YOUR_IP:11434 Open WebUI: OLLAMA_BASE_URL = http://YOUR_IP:11434
Community setups
"$200 credit covered my entire trial. RAG pipeline on documents works great for my team."
Ready to get started?
New accounts get $200 credit for 60 days. Enough to test your full setup risk-free.