Hosting · working at 10,000 users · rates as read 30 Sept 2026
On free tier, Fly.io is No free plan: First 10GB free each month of egress and DigitalOcean App Platform is Free Tier Starting at $0 /month. On cheapest paid plan, Fly.io does not publish it and DigitalOcean App Platform is Paid Tier Starting at $5 /month. On rate above what's included, Fly.io is $0.15/GB per month for volumes, $0.08/GB per month egress and DigitalOcean App Platform is Additional outbound transfer $0.02 per GiB. StackTab sells neither of these and takes no referral fee on either: it scores them. Every figure was read off the named company's own page on or since 2026-09-28; the URLs and the dates are at the foot of this page, and a job re-fetches each one on a schedule and fails when a figure is no longer on the page it came from.
2 compared · 3 criteria, identical for every column · every competitor figure read off that company's own page · last verified 2026-09-28
| Service | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Fly.ioMicro-VMs you place in specific regions, billed by the second.verified 28 Sept 2026fly.io/docs/about/pricing | $ | $ | $ |
| DigitalOcean App PlatformFlat-rate app containers with a predictable monthly number.verified 28 Sept 2026digitalocean.com/pricing/app-platform | $ | $ | $ |
- Sorted by the total at
- Micro-VMs you place in specific regions, billed by the second.verified 28 Sept 2026fly.io/docs/about/pricing
- 1,000 users
- $
2.992.99 Pay as you go - 10,000 users
- $
1919 Pay as you go - 100,000 users
- $
176176 Pay as you go
- Flat-rate app containers with a predictable monthly number.verified 28 Sept 2026digitalocean.com/pricing/app-platform
- 1,000 users
- $
5.005.00 Basic - 10,000 users
- $
7.007.00 Basic - 100,000 users
- $
4343 Basic
| Criterion | Fly.io | DigitalOcean App Platform |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | No free plan: First 10GB free each month of egressThere is no free tier and no monthly platform fee; the only thing given away is the first 10 GB of outbound transfer. | Free Tier Starting at $0 /month3 apps, static sites only, with a 1 GiB data-transfer allowance per app. |
| Cheapest paid plan | Not publishedFly.io publishes no named plans at all. You pay for machines, volumes and egress, so there is no plan fee to quote. | Paid Tier Starting at $5 /monthPer container. DigitalOcean has collapsed what used to be a Basic and Professional ladder into one paid tier. |
| Rate above what's included | $0.15/GB per month for volumes, $0.08/GB per month egressMachines are billed while running, so an app that stops between requests costs materially less than the same app on a fixed instance. | Additional outbound transfer $0.02 per GiBDedicated egress IPs are $25.00/mo per app and a development database is $7.00. |
“Not published” means that company does not state the figure on the page cited at the foot of this page. It is not a claim that no such figure exists. A company that publishes no limit most likely has none, but “most likely” is not a fact, and this table prints what was read rather than what was inferred.
- Free tier: what the vendor gives you at $0 a month, in its own words
- Rate above what's included: the per-unit or per-transaction rate the vendor publishes for usage beyond the plan: the figure you need to work out a bill before you commit to one
Fly.io: No free plan: First 10GB free each month of egress. There is no free tier and no monthly platform fee; the only thing given away is the first 10 GB of outbound transfer. DigitalOcean App Platform: Free Tier Starting at $0 /month. 3 apps, static sites only, with a 1 GiB data-transfer allowance per app. Read from fly.io and digitalocean.com on 2026-09-28. Free tier here means what the vendor gives you at $0 a month, in its own words.
Fly.io does not state it on fly.io. Fly.io publishes no named plans at all. You pay for machines, volumes and egress, so there is no plan fee to quote. DigitalOcean App Platform: Paid Tier Starting at $5 /month. Per container. DigitalOcean has collapsed what used to be a Basic and Professional ladder into one paid tier. Read from fly.io and digitalocean.com on 2026-09-28.
Fly.io: $0.15/GB per month for volumes, $0.08/GB per month egress. Machines are billed while running, so an app that stops between requests costs materially less than the same app on a fixed instance. DigitalOcean App Platform: Additional outbound transfer $0.02 per GiB. Dedicated egress IPs are $25.00/mo per app and a development database is $7.00. Read from fly.io and digitalocean.com on 2026-09-28. Rate above what's included here means the per-unit or per-transaction rate the vendor publishes for usage beyond the plan: the figure you need to work out a bill before you commit to one.
Fly.io: You need the app running in several regions and close to the user, and you are willing to think about machines rather than a platform. Fly.io has no plan fee at all, so a small multi-region deployment costs what its machines cost, and nothing else in this table prices region-by-region placement as an ordinary thing to do. DigitalOcean App Platform: You already run other things on DigitalOcean and you want one invoice and one support relationship. App Platform sits beside the droplets and managed databases you have, at $5/month per container, and the whole pricing structure is one paid tier rather than a ladder to reason about.
StackTab does not sell any of these and has nothing to gain from which one you choose: it scores them. Each case below is the one that option genuinely wins.
- Fly.io: You need the app running in several regions and close to the user, and you are willing to think about machines rather than a platform. Fly.io has no plan fee at all, so a small multi-region deployment costs what its machines cost, and nothing else in this table prices region-by-region placement as an ordinary thing to do.
- DigitalOcean App Platform: You already run other things on DigitalOcean and you want one invoice and one support relationship. App Platform sits beside the droplets and managed databases you have, at $5/month per container, and the whole pricing structure is one paid tier rather than a ladder to reason about.
Prices and limits move, and a page quoting a stale one is worth less than a page quoting none. Every source is printed here so a reader can check it against the day they are reading this, and a job re-fetches each of these URLs on a schedule and fails when a figure above no longer appears on the page it came from.
- Fly.io: fly.io/docs/about/pricing/: Free tier, Cheapest paid plan, Rate above what's included. Read 2026-09-28.
- DigitalOcean App Platform: www.digitalocean.com/pricing/app-platform: Free tier, Cheapest paid plan, Rate above what's included. Read 2026-09-28.
Last verified 2026-09-28. https://stacktab.thecompound.tech/compare/fly-io-vs-digitalocean-app