How can I temporarily increase the RAM of a DigitalOcean droplet and then downgrade it later?

Posted on February 15, 2025

Hi there,

I need to temporarily increase the RAM of my DigitalOcean droplet for a few hours/days for an intensive task (e.g., building an application or processing large data). After the task is completed, I would like to downgrade the droplet back to its original RAM size.

Is it possible to increase the RAM temporarily and then downgrade it back to the original size without creating a new droplet? If so, can you guide me on the process to do this safely and effectively?

Additionally, if I resize the droplet to a larger plan temporarily, will I be able to downgrade the RAM size later? Or is there any workaround that would allow me to reduce the RAM size again after temporarily scaling it up?

Thanks in advance for your help!

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Bobby Iliev

February 15, 2025

Accepted Answer

Hi there!

Yes, you can temporarily increase the RAM of your DigitalOcean Droplet and downgrade it later, but you need to be careful with how you resize it.

Make sure to only resize the CPU and RAM without increasing the disk size. If you increase the disk, you won’t be able to scale it down later. You can follow the steps here: Resizing a Droplet.

For a smooth process, take a snapshot before resizing in case you need to revert. When you’re done, you can resize back to your original plan without issues: