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Kubernetes Pricing

Last verified 5 Nov 2026

DigitalOcean Kubernetes (DOKS) is a Kubernetes service with a fully managed control plane, high availability, and autoscaling. DOKS integrates with standard Kubernetes toolchains and DigitalOcean’s load balancers, volumes, CPU and GPU Droplets, API, and CLI.

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Node Pools

The total cost of a DOKS cluster depends on the configuration and usage of its node pools throughout the month. Node pools can have a variable number of nodes over the course of a month due to auto-scaling or manual changes.

Worker nodes are built on Droplets and are charged per second at the same price as Droplets. Billing starts when a node in the node pool is ready, even if it is unhealthy. We do not charge for created nodes that do not join the cluster.

Bundled-plan worker nodes have a minimum charge of 60 seconds or $0.01 per node, whichever is greater, and a monthly usage cap of 672 hours (28 days).

v5 worker nodes are billed per second at an hourly rate without a monthly usage cap, with a minimum charge of 60 seconds or $0.01 per node, whichever is greater. The monthly total for continuously running nodes varies based on the number of hours in the month. Public IPv4 addresses for v5 worker nodes are billed separately from the worker-node configuration and appear as their own line item on your invoice. The introductory line-item price is currently $0.00 but is subject to change in accordance with the DigitalOcean Terms of Service.

Click for more details and examples of bundled-plan node pool pricing.

Bundled-plan worker nodes are charged per second.

For example, consider a cluster with:
- Three worker nodes that cost $100/month ($0.00004134/second)
- No autoscaling
- 27 days, 1 hour, and 20 seconds (2,336,420 seconds) of usage
The total cost would be 3 * $0.00004134/second * 2,336,420 seconds = $289.73.
At minimum, we charge bundled-plan node pools for 60 seconds of usage or $0.01 per node in the pool, whichever is greater. For node pools with varying number of nodes with different time spans, we aggregate the usage first.

For example, if a worker pool has 3 nodes with 20 seconds of usage each earlier in the month, then 15 seconds of usage later in the month, the aggregate usage is 35 seconds. For billing, we round this usage up to 60 seconds. If that results in a bill of less than $0.03 ($0.01 per node), we round the bill up to $0.03.

At most, we charge bundled-plan node pools for 28 days of usage per month. If there are more than 28 days in the month, we charge for the 28 days (672 hours) with the highest usage, and don’t charge for any additional usage.

For example, consider a cluster that:

Runs continuously through a month with 31 days (744 hours)
Has a node pool that varies between 10 and 25 nodes
Uses worker nodes that cost $100/month ($0.00004134/second)

A node pool’s fixed size over a time is called a span. To calculate the total cost, we aggregate node pool spans with the same number of nodes over the month, and sort in descending order:

Number of Nodes	Node Span (Hours)	Span Cost
25	100	$0.00004134 * 25 * 100 * 3,600 seconds = $372.06
20	100	$0.00004134 * 20 * 100 * 3,600 seconds = $297.65
15	100	$0.00004134 * 15 * 100 * 3,600 seconds = $223.24
15	100	$0.00004134 * 15 * 100 * 3,600 seconds = $223.24
15	100	$0.00004134 * 15 * 100 * 3,600 seconds = $223.24
10	100	$0.00004134 * 10 * 100 * 3,600 seconds = $148.82
10	100	$0.00004134 * 10 * 72 * 3,600 seconds = $107.15 Reached billing cap of 672 hours. No billing for 28 hours in span.
10	44	No billing for 44 hours in span.

The 672 hours billing cap is reached in the second span with 10 nodes. While the usage is for a total of 744 hours (31 days), we bill you only for 672 hours (28 days). Thus, the total node pool cost is $372.06 + $297.65 + $223.24 + $223.24 + $223.24 + $148.82 + $107.15 = $1,595.40.

GPU Worker Nodes

GPU worker nodes are priced per second at the same price as the GPU Droplets. To reserve H100 GPUs or get contract pricing, contact your sales representative or Customer Success Manager, or request using the H100 GPU Worker Nodes form.

Spot GPU node pools are billed at a variable Spot rate that is locked when you create the node pool and applies to every node in the pool, including nodes added later by autoscaling. Like other GPU node pools, they have no monthly usage cap. When you create a new Spot node pool, each node is billed at the prevailing Spot rate for the corresponding Spot GPU Droplet. For current Spot rates, see Droplet pricing.

Control Plane and High Availability

The control plane is fully managed by DigitalOcean and included at no cost.

High availability (HA) for the control plane costs $40.00 per month, prorated hourly.

Surge Upgrades

Surge upgrades, which create duplicate nodes during upgrades, are available at no additional cost.

Integration with Other DigitalOcean Products

Integration with DigitalOcean Load Balancers is charged at the same rate as DigitalOcean Load Balancers.

Integration with volumes is charged at the same rate as volumes.

Integration with NFS shared storage is charged at the same rate as DigitalOcean NFS.

Clusters with Isolated Worker Nodes require a VPC NAT Gateway, charged at the same rate as VPC NAT Gateways.

Bandwidth

Each worker node includes the free outbound data transfer allowance of its Droplet plan, prorated by how long the node runs. For example, a worker node whose plan includes 5,000 GiB of transfer per month accrues 5,000 GiB / (24 * 28) = 7.44 GiB of allowance for each hour it runs. In an autoscaling node pool, each node accrues allowance only for the hours it exists, so the pool’s total allowance follows its node count.

Worker node allowances are pooled at the team level with the allowances of all the team’s Droplets. Outbound transfer beyond the team’s pool is billed at $0.01 per GiB, the same rate as Droplets. For details on how the team transfer pool works, see Droplet bandwidth billing.