VPS Showdown VPS Showdown

DigitalOcean Regular (1 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Premium AMD (1 GB)

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Welcome to another round of the VPS Showdown. Today I've got brand new instances from DigitalOcean and did some benchmarking. Each instance was running Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 and were created in the New York area (or close to it). Time to see who showed up today.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Last Benchmarked Sat, 01 Aug 2026 05:00:48 GMT Sat, 01 Aug 2026 05:09:47 GMT
Linux Distro Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version 7.0.0-27-generic 7.0.0-27-generic
MySQL Version 8.4.10-0ubuntu0.26.04.1 8.4.10-0ubuntu0.26.04.1
Redis Version 8.0.5 8.0.5
Location New York, NY New York, NY
Monthly Price $6.00 $7.00
RAM (GB) 1 1
CPU Cores 1 1
Storage (TB) 25 25
Storage Type SSD NVMe
Transfer (TB) 1 1

Head-to-head

Category winners from the latest benchmarks.

CategoryWinner
CPU (events/sec)DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Memory (read MiB/s)DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Disk I/O (MiB/s)DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
MySQL (read/write tps)DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Redis (GET/sec)DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Value (CPU events per $/mo)DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) takes 4 of 6 categories.

CPU

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Vendor GenuineIntel AuthenticAMD
Model Name DO-Regular DO-Premium-AMD
Clock Speed (MHz) 2,494.14 1,996.25
CPU Cache Size (KB) 4,096.00 512.00
BogoMips 4,988.28 3,992.49
Events per Second 815.71 1,324.09
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.98 0.64
Average Latency (ms) 1.22 0.75
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.86 3.68
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.5 0.81

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Operations per second 3,956,759.89 4,911,179.23
Mebibytes per second 3,864.02 4,796.07
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.03 0.42
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Operations per second 3,883,080.49 4,739,304.36
Mebibytes per second 3,792.07 4,628.23
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 6.51 0.68
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Reads per Second 2,180.62 1,630.22
Writes per Second 1,453.75 1,086.81
Fsyncs per Second 4,652.64 3,484.79
Read Mebibytes per Second 34.07 25.47
Written Mebibytes per Second 22.71 16.98
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.12 0.16
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.63 7.68
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.34 0.54

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 2,077.12 1,821.68
Average Latency (ms) 2,109.98 1,829.83
Maximum Latency (ms) 2,125.57 1,839.40
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2,120.76 1,836.24

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Transactions per second 6,111.00 6,287.00
Queries per second 61,110.00 62,870.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.13 1.22
Average Latency (ms) 1.63 1.59
Maximum Latency (ms) 16.53 139.73
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.3 2

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Transactions per second 3,456.00 3,386.00
Queries per second 34,560.00 33,860.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.3 1.26
Average Latency (ms) 2.89 2.95
Maximum Latency (ms) 17.71 31.46
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.57 5.37

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Transactions per second 2,206.00 1,941.00
Queries per second 22,060.00 19,410.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.57 2.76
Average Latency (ms) 4.53 5.15
Maximum Latency (ms) 12.36 56.29
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 6.55 8.28

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Transactions per second 6,940.00 5,930.00
Queries per second 69,400.00 59,300.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.52 0.76
Average Latency (ms) 1.43 1.68
Maximum Latency (ms) 22.94 13.82
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.57 3.13

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Transactions per second 1,084,592.00 1,259,342.00
Queries per second 10,845,920.00 12,593,420.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 506.06 524.15
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Transactions per second 160,315.00 132,782.00
Queries per second 1,603,150.00 1,327,820.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.06 0.07
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.76 3.64
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.1 0.11

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Transactions per second 3,209.00 4,504.00
Queries per second 32,090.00 45,040.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.96 0.64
Average Latency (ms) 3.11 2.22
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.53 6.76
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.57 3.3

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Transactions per second 5,822.00 6,228.00
Queries per second 58,220.00 62,280.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.52 0.54
Average Latency (ms) 1.71 1.6
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.33 3.59
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.86 2.3

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Transactions per second 9,262.00 5,980.00
Queries per second 92,620.00 59,800.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.52 0.79
Average Latency (ms) 1.08 1.67
Maximum Latency (ms) 21.4 36.23
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.82 2.81

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Transactions per second 8,187.00 6,226.00
Queries per second 81,870.00 62,260.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.53 0.8
Average Latency (ms) 1.22 1.6
Maximum Latency (ms) 14.67 29.46
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.18 2.66

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Transactions per second 79,336.00 57,959.00
Queries per second 793,360.00 579,590.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.13 0.17
Maximum Latency (ms) 11.85 98.1
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.34 1.08

Redis

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 44,722.72 62,073.25
PING_MBULK per Second 44,267.38 63,451.78
SET per Second 47,687.18 64,516.13
GET per Second 45,351.48 65,189.05
INCR per Second 43,535.05 60,350.03
LPUSH per Second 39,047.25 60,168.47
RPUSH per Second 37,481.26 60,496.07
LPOP per Second 40,404.04 60,864.27
RPOP per Second 38,595.14 64,557.78
SADD per Second 38,834.95 59,630.29
HSET per Second 35,932.45 60,350.03
SPOP per Second 32,000.00 60,024.01
ZADD per Second 30,750.31 62,034.74
ZPOPMIN per Second 30,854.68 63,211.12
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 24,789.29 33,967.39
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 13,390.47 17,322.02
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 8,059.32 10,161.57
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 7,098.74 9,291.09
MSET (10 keys) per Second 41,928.72 52,548.61

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
PING_INLINE0.690.51
PING_MBULK0.690.49
SET0.650.49
GET0.680.48
INCR0.710.52
LPUSH0.800.53
RPUSH0.820.53
LPOP0.780.52
RPOP0.810.49
SADD0.790.53
HSET0.860.53
SPOP0.960.52
ZADD1.010.51
ZPOPMIN1.000.50
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)1.311.01
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)2.441.94
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)3.793.20
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)4.253.48
MSET (10 keys)0.810.75

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The DigitalOcean Premium AMD (1 GB) instance outperforms the Regular (1 GB) instance across various benchmarks, particularly in Redis operations where the Premium instance achieves a PING_INLINE RPS of 62073.25 compared to the Regular's 44722.72, and in CPU operations with 1324.09 events per second versus 815.71. For budget-conscious users who require a balance of performance and cost, the Regular instance is a solid choice, but for those prioritizing superior raw performance, especially in compute-heavy tasks, the Premium AMD instance is the clear winner.

From the friendly human:

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Providers & pricing

DigitalOcean overviewDigitalOcean Regular (1 GB) pricing DigitalOcean Premium AMD (1 GB) pricing

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