Sponsored · DigitalOcean
When pay-per-token beats renting a GPU box
Advertising disclosure: We may earn a commission if you sign up through the DigitalOcean links on this page, at no extra cost to you.
This site compares VPS boxes. Sometimes the right move for AI features is not another GPU droplet — it is pay-per-token inference with no idle hardware.
Our position: keep a normal VPS (or App Platform) for your app. Use DigitalOcean Serverless Inference when GPU spend is bursty, models change often, or you do not want to babysit CUDA drivers. Rent a GPU VPS only when you need always-on fine-tuning, custom runtimes, or predictable heavy throughput you have already measured.
Three situations where Serverless Inference fits
- Idle GPU bills — you shipped a chat or embedding feature that sits quiet most of the day. Pay-per-token means you are not paying for a warm A100 overnight. Check Serverless Inference (ad)
- Ship the feature, not the cluster — competitors are adding AI in days because they are not managing inference infra. One API, production routing, no server checklist. Open the product page (ad)
- Many models, one platform — OpenAI, Anthropic Claude, Llama, and others behind DigitalOcean’s Inference Router with caching and reliability baked in. See models & routing (ad)
When a VPS still wins
Self-hosted open weights with steady load, air-gapped requirements, or custom CUDA stacks still belong on a box. Compare droplet-class plans on our DigitalOcean VPS page or the plan matrix. For Docker sizing, see Best VPS for Docker.