Head to head · Object storage · October 2026 research run
DigitalOcean Spaces vs Tigris
DigitalOcean Spaces scores 63.2 (B) on agent readiness against Tigris's 44.4 (E), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Tigris leads on payments & pricing and maintenance & community. Both do object storage.
Best file storage and sharing APIs for AI agents · All 75 storage comparisons
Which one, for what
Good for Teams already on DigitalOcean that want object storage with a CDN and a flat $5 entry price for up to 250 GiB, with free transfer to Droplets in the same region.
Ahead on
- Reliability, 77 against 35
- Schema & documentation, 63 against 50
- Agent ergonomics, 73 against 53
- Security & auth, 77 against 51
- Transparency & trust, 74 against 48
Also in its favour
- No incidents deducted, where Tigris loses 3 points for them
Watch for
The Spaces MCP server has ten tools for access keys and CDN endpoints. None reads, writes, lists or shares an object
Tigris E
Good for Agent workloads that want per-agent forks of a dataset, global reads without egress fees, and an OAuth MCP server.
Ahead on
- Payments & pricing, 30 against 20
- Maintenance & community, 77 against 37
Also in its favour
- Runs on your own machine
Watch for
16 status incidents between 4 July and 2 October 2026, including outages in US regions on 31 July and 2 August
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | DigitalOcean Spaces | Tigris | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 77 | 35 | DigitalOcean Spaces +42 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 63 | 50 | DigitalOcean Spaces +13 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 73 | 53 | DigitalOcean Spaces +20 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 77 | 51 | DigitalOcean Spaces +26 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 20 | 30 | Tigris +10 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 37 | 77 | Tigris +40 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 74 | 48 | DigitalOcean Spaces +26 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -3 | |
| Total | 63.2 · B | 44.4 · E |
Facts side by side
| Fact | DigitalOcean Spaces | Tigris |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | DigitalOcean, LLC | Tigris Data |
| Hosted endpoint | https://nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com | https://t3.storage.dev |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | API key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary service under the DigitalOcean Terms of Service Agreement. The MCP server is MIT | MIT |
| Read-only variant documented | yes | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-04-08 | 2026-09-30 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-08-22 | couldn't be read |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2025-01-01 | couldn't be read |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | couldn't be read |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | couldn't be read |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | couldn't be read |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | couldn't be read |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | couldn't be read |
| Popularity | none | 4 stars, 20 npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3/5 (2) |
Verdicts
DigitalOcean Spaces
Per-bucket access keys with read or read-write-delete grants, an 800 operations a second limit per bucket and a 99.9 per cent SLA are all published. The MCP server manages keys and CDN endpoints only, not objects, and the S3 reference documents no error codes. A payment method is required before any bucket is created.
Tigris
No egress fees, and one endpoint (t3.storage.dev) with region auto for every location. 16 status incidents between 4 July and 2 October 2026, including outages in US regions on 31 July and 2 August.
Before you call either
DigitalOcean Spaces
- Set the endpoint to
https://<region>.digitaloceanspaces.comand, in AWS SDKs other than Python's, setregiontous-east-1when creating a bucket - Ask for a limited access key with a Read or Read/Write/Delete grant on one bucket. A full access key can create, configure and delete every bucket
- Do the object work through the S3 API. The MCP server and
doctlcannot upload, list, move or delete files - Retry with exponential backoff on
503 Slow Down, and keep below 800 operations a second per bucket - Fetch presigned links from the origin host, not the CDN. The docs say presigned requests through the CDN are not cached and can double the bandwidth charge
- Avoid many tiny objects. Each bills as at least 4 KiB on Standard and 128 KiB on Cold Storage, which also has a 30-day minimum
Tigris
- Point the AWS SDK at https://t3.storage.dev with region
auto; the stdio MCP README still shows the older fly.storage.tigris.dev endpoint - Ask for an access key with a ReadOnly or ReadWrite role on one bucket rather than an org-wide key
- Keep presigned URLs short; Tigris accepts up to 90 days
- Don't call tigris_list_objects on a large bucket; it walks every object with no limit or prefix
- Use @tigrisdata/iam 2.6.0 or later before writing policies with conditions
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, DigitalOcean Spaces or Tigris?
DigitalOcean Spaces scores 63.2 (B) on agent readiness against Tigris's 44.4 (E), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Tigris leads on payments & pricing and maintenance & community.
Do DigitalOcean Spaces and Tigris need an API key?
DigitalOcean Spaces needs an API key. Tigris takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in.
Can an agent call DigitalOcean Spaces and Tigris without installing anything?
Yes. DigitalOcean Spaces has a hosted endpoint at https://nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com and Tigris at https://t3.storage.dev.
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Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/digitalocean-spaces-vs-tigris.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/digitalocean-spaces.json·/api/v1/tools/tigris.json - From a terminal
anchor compare digitalocean-spaces tigris(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "digitalocean-spaces", "b": "tigris"}at/mcp, no key