Comparisons

Azure is built for organisations. DigitalOcean is built for applications. Most teams know instantly which sentence describes them.

If you need BigQuery, this is not a comparison. If you need three web servers, it very much is.

Oracle Cloud is cheaper than AWS on several dimensions and has a genuinely better free tier. It also has a much thinner ecosystem.

For most workloads AWS is the more capable platform. OVHcloud wins on two specific axes, and for some organisations those axes are the whole decision.

Linode gives you a server. AWS gives you a platform. The right question is which of those you are actually going to use.

Hetzner wins on price per core. Linode wins on where it can put your servers and how well they are connected. Pick the constraint that binds you.

Hetzner is meaningfully cheaper. DigitalOcean is meaningfully easier and more global. Both statements are true and the choice follows from which you need.

These two are closer than any other pair in this catalogue. The honest answer is that the deciding factors are small ones.

These two rarely lose to each other on features. They lose on fit: what your data looks like, and what your organisation already runs.

The price gap here is not marginal, it is severe. Which makes the question whether you need what AWS charges for.