DigitalOcean Regular (1 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Premium AMD (1 GB)
Last updated on October 1, 2026
Same showdown, different day. Today I spun up fresh instances from DigitalOcean and ran some benchmarks. Each instance was running Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 and all resided in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Enough talk. Here's the data.
Overview
DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Last Benchmarked
Thu, 01 Oct 2026 05:00:49 GMT
Thu, 01 Oct 2026 05:09:47 GMT
Linux Distro
Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64
Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version
7.0.0-31-generic
7.0.0-31-generic
MySQL Version
8.4.11-0ubuntu0.26.04.1
8.4.11-0ubuntu0.26.04.1
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.
Category Winner
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
4,988.27
3,992.49
Events per Second
705.37
1,098.91
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.98
0.72
Average Latency (ms)
1.41
0.91
Maximum Latency (ms)
12.76
4.09
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
2
1.12
Memory
Memory Read
DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Operations per second
3,663,208.77
4,162,799.09
Mebibytes per second
3,577.35
4,065.23
Minimum Latency (ms)
0
0
Average Latency (ms)
0
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
5.47
0.5
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
0
0
Memory Write
DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Operations per second
3,890,887.47
4,248,501.02
Mebibytes per second
3,799.69
4,148.93
Minimum Latency (ms)
0
0
Average Latency (ms)
0
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
2.33
0.58
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
0
0
File I/O
DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Reads per Second
2,194.30
1,259.91
Writes per Second
1,462.87
839.91
Fsyncs per Second
4,688.57
2,696.32
Read Mebibytes per Second
34.29
19.69
Written Mebibytes per Second
22.86
13.12
Minimum Latency (ms)
0
0
Average Latency (ms)
0.12
0.21
Maximum Latency (ms)
10.7
48.77
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
0.32
0.67
Mutex
DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms)
2,352.19
2,291.63
Average Latency (ms)
2,382.76
2,304.59
Maximum Latency (ms)
2,393.79
2,317.78
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
2,405.65
2,320.55
MySQL
MySQL Read-only
DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Transactions per second
4,593.00
4,879.00
Queries per second
45,930.00
48,790.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
1.29
1.37
Average Latency (ms)
2.17
2.05
Maximum Latency (ms)
13.82
42.95
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
3.02
2.76
MySQL Write-only
DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Transactions per second
3,486.00
2,925.00
Queries per second
34,860.00
29,250.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
1.26
1.54
Average Latency (ms)
2.86
3.41
Maximum Latency (ms)
33.41
22.27
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
4.33
5.18
MySQL Read/Write
DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Transactions per second
1,761.00
1,482.00
Queries per second
17,610.00
14,820.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
3.36
3.5
Average Latency (ms)
5.67
6.74
Maximum Latency (ms)
16.69
25.47
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
7.98
10.27
MySQL INSERT
DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Transactions per second
6,877.00
4,894.00
Queries per second
68,770.00
48,940.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.65
0.88
Average Latency (ms)
1.45
2.04
Maximum Latency (ms)
9.48
17.26
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
2.35
3.62
MySQL Bulk INSERT
DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Transactions per second
833,039.00
1,026,342.00
Queries per second
8,330,390.00
10,263,420.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0
0
Average Latency (ms)
0.01
0.01
Maximum Latency (ms)
670.02
488.41
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
0
0
MySQL SELECT
DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Transactions per second
122,209.00
126,782.00
Queries per second
1,222,090.00
1,267,820.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.04
0.06
Average Latency (ms)
0.08
0.08
Maximum Latency (ms)
8.73
1.76
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
0.14
0.11
MySQL SELECT (Random Points)
DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Transactions per second
3,294.00
3,979.00
Queries per second
32,940.00
39,790.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
1.13
0.87
Average Latency (ms)
3.03
2.51
Maximum Latency (ms)
17.77
6.34
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
4.65
3.62
MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)
DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Transactions per second
5,143.00
5,301.00
Queries per second
51,430.00
53,010.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.52
0.6
Average Latency (ms)
1.94
1.88
Maximum Latency (ms)
8.8
13.82
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
3.02
2.66
MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)
DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Transactions per second
5,821.00
3,963.00
Queries per second
58,210.00
39,630.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.62
1.02
Average Latency (ms)
1.71
2.52
Maximum Latency (ms)
21.71
40.61
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
3.3
4.57
MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)
DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Transactions per second
7,391.00
4,192.00
Queries per second
73,910.00
41,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.57
1.07
Average Latency (ms)
1.35
2.38
Maximum Latency (ms)
8.09
19.27
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
2.14
4.18
MySQL DELETE
DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Transactions per second
51,002.00
37,116.00
Queries per second
510,020.00
371,160.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.04
0.06
Average Latency (ms)
0.19
0.27
Maximum Latency (ms)
9.61
22.61
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
1.12
1.7
Redis
DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second
31,026.99
54,259.36
PING_MBULK per Second
34,530.39
53,106.74
SET per Second
35,945.36
54,495.91
GET per Second
34,293.55
56,980.06
INCR per Second
23,820.87
52,938.06
LPUSH per Second
30,931.02
49,825.61
RPUSH per Second
33,014.20
51,124.75
LPOP per Second
30,553.01
51,072.52
RPOP per Second
34,459.00
50,327.12
SADD per Second
37,285.61
52,083.34
HSET per Second
29,002.32
45,537.34
SPOP per Second
32,195.75
52,826.20
ZADD per Second
30,562.35
48,402.71
ZPOPMIN per Second
29,342.72
52,083.34
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second
20,024.03
28,710.88
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second
11,069.29
12,250.40
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second
6,976.42
7,739.94
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second
6,141.75
6,953.14
MSET (10 keys) per Second
27,609.06
41,101.52
Redis Average Latency (ms)
DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
PING_INLINE 0.99 0.59 PING_MBULK 0.88 0.59 SET 0.86 0.59 GET 0.90 0.56 INCR 1.33 0.61 LPUSH 1.00 0.65 RPUSH 0.94 0.63 LPOP 1.03 0.65 RPOP 0.91 0.65 SADD 0.83 0.62 HSET 1.07 0.71 SPOP 0.95 0.60 ZADD 1.01 0.67 ZPOPMIN 1.06 0.61 LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) 1.62 1.21 LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) 2.90 2.68 LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) 4.30 3.95 LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) 4.79 4.40 MSET (10 keys) 1.25 0.97
Conclusion
From the friendly robots:
The DigitalOcean Premium AMD (1 GB) instance outperforms the Regular (1 GB) in both Redis benchmarks and MySQL bulk insert operations, with higher requests per second and significantly lower latencies. The Premium instance achieves up to 54,259 RPS in Redis PING_INLINE compared to 31,027 RPS in the Regular instance, and it delivers a TPS of 102,424 for MySQL bulk inserts versus 82,258 in the Regular instance, indicating it is better suited for CPU-intensive and I/O-demanding applications, despite costing more per month.
From the friendly human:
If you found this VPS Showdown helpful in your search for a hosting provider, please consider supporting my efforts by signing up using my referral link for DigitalOcean .
You can also support me next time you shop on Amazon .
