DigitalOcean has launched Agent Droplets, a new subscription-based offering that packages the infrastructure and services needed to build and run AI agents into a single monthly plan.
Agent Droplets combine DigitalOcean Managed Agents capabilities including a managed runtime, governed access to more than 16,000 tools, serverless inference, persistent agent memory and storage. The company is positioning the offering as a simpler way for developers and businesses to deploy agentic applications without assembling and paying for multiple infrastructure services separately.
DigitalOcean introduced Managed Agents in public preview on September 22, and Agent Droplets build on that foundation by bundling its core capabilities into predictable monthly subscriptions.
The offering is available in two paid tiers. Agent Droplet Pro costs $50 per month and provides a 15% discount across included resources, while Agent Droplet Team costs $200 per month and provides a 20% discount.
Customers can choose whether spending stops once the monthly plan allowance is exhausted or continues at standard list prices. This gives developers and businesses the option to establish a defined starting budget while still allowing workloads to scale when additional capacity is needed.
Agent Droplets are designed to support applications as they move from initial experimentation into production workloads. DigitalOcean’s underlying platform provides isolated execution environments, serverless inference, persistent memory, session storage and governed tool access.
Each subscription includes Harness Runtime, which provides dedicated microVM sandboxes for agent execution. DigitalOcean said the environments can start in about one second and resume from a paused state in roughly 300 milliseconds based on the company’s testing. The runtime can automatically pause when idle, with memory and session storage included under the applicable plan discount.
The offering also includes DigitalOcean’s Inference Engine, which provides access to DigitalOcean-hosted open models including Kimi K3 and GLM 5.3. Frontier models such as Claude and GPT remain available separately on a pay-as-you-go basis at list prices.
Agent Droplets also provide access to the company’s Action Gateway, which offers governed access to more than 16,000 tools. Available capabilities include code interpretation, browser automation, web search and web fetching, while credentials are brokered outside the agent itself.
Both paid tiers include unlimited agents without per-seat charges, along with observability and enterprise security capabilities such as single sign-on, multi-factor authentication, role-based access controls, audit logs, cloud firewalls and DDoS protection.
DigitalOcean also introduced a free trial that gives eligible new customers $5 in promotional credit without requiring a payment card. The company said the credit is intended to give developers enough resources to test an agent before moving to a paid plan.
Alongside Agent Droplets, DigitalOcean announced Inference and Agents Balance, a prepaid balance specifically for AI agent workloads. Customers can fund the balance with amounts ranging from $5 to $500.
Inference and Agents Balance can be used for Serverless Inference, Action Gateway and Managed Agents while other DigitalOcean cloud services continue to bill separately. Once an Agent Droplet’s included allowance has been consumed, supported agent workloads can automatically draw from the prepaid balance.
Agent Droplets and Inference and Agents Balance are available in all regions where DigitalOcean Managed Agents is offered. Existing Managed Agents customers can move their agents onto an Agent Droplet without making changes to those agents.
DigitalOcean said it plans to expand the range of resources included with Agent Droplets over time as customers adopt additional agentic capabilities.
The launch reflects DigitalOcean’s broader effort to position its cloud platform around AI inference and agentic workloads while providing developers and smaller companies with simpler pricing and infrastructure options.
KEY QUOTE:
“Fourteen years ago a Droplet made the cloud something one developer could understand and afford, and a generation of companies got built on it. The Droplet was never about a server or a VM. It was about the moment you have an idea at 11 p.m. and want it running before you go to sleep. Agents should feel like that. An Agent Droplet is one subscription for everything an agent needs. We take the guesswork out of adopting new agent technologies and managing spend, so companies can start their journey with DigitalOcean and scale it with us. You pick a size and start.”
Vinay Kumar, Chief Product and Technology Officer of DigitalOcean
