DigitalOcean
$5,000 in credits
Save up to $5,000
Developer & ITSimple, developer-friendly cloud infrastructure with predictable pricing, credits for compute, databases, and Kubernetes.
What you get
- $5,000 in DigitalOcean credits (12 months)
- Droplets (VMs) with SSD storage
- Managed Kubernetes and databases
- App Platform for auto-deploy
- Spaces object storage and CDN
Who can claim it
Early-stage startup, new DigitalOcean account
Questions
Can I get DigitalOcean startup credits right now?
Not through the current cohort. The DigitalOcean Startups page (formerly Hatch) says applications for the current cohort are temporarily paused, ahead of an updated program in early 2027. Our listing says $5,000 in credits; confirm the amount and timing when you redeem.
How long do DigitalOcean startup credits last?
DigitalOcean Startups credits last 12 months. DigitalOcean does not grant extensions, and unused credits are forfeited. Participants generally get a $10,000 monthly usage limit, and members also get 15 months of free Standard-tier support.
Who is eligible for DigitalOcean's startup program?
Startups that have raised $10M or less, with a company website, a matching corporate email and a registered DigitalOcean team account. You must not have used DigitalOcean credits before. AI-native startups are prioritized, and consultancies, dev shops and marketing agencies are excluded.
Do the credits cover GPUs or OpenAI and Anthropic models?
No. DigitalOcean Startups credits exclude GPU Droplets, NVIDIA H100 GPU Kubernetes, Bare Metal GPUs, Dedicated Inference, Serverless Inference and third-party models such as Anthropic and OpenAI. GPU credits are a separate benefit granted only after review.
How much does DigitalOcean cost per month?
Basic Droplets start at $4 per month for 512 MiB and 1 vCPU, and a 2 GiB Droplet is $12. Managed PostgreSQL starts at $15.15 per month. A 2 GiB Droplet with weekly backups and a 1 GiB PostgreSQL database comes to $29.55 per month.
Does DigitalOcean charge for bandwidth?
Each Droplet includes outbound transfer, from 500 GiB on the $4 plan to 6,000 GiB on the $96 plan, pooled across your team. Inbound traffic is free. Outbound traffic over the pool costs $0.01 per GiB.