VPS Showdown VPS Showdown

DigitalOcean Premium AMD (1 GB) vs. Vultr High Frequency Intel (2 GB)

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Same showdown, different day. Today I spun up fresh instances from DigitalOcean and Vultr and ran some benchmarks. All instances were spun up with Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 and were created in the New York area (or close to it). Let's get into the numbers.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Last Benchmarked Thu, 01 Oct 2026 05:09:47 GMT Tue, 01 Sep 2026 05:09:02 GMT
Linux Distro Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version 7.0.0-31-generic 7.0.0-29-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 Newark, NJ
Monthly Price $7.00 $12.00
RAM (GB) 1 2
CPU Cores 1 1
Storage (TB) 25 64
Storage Type NVMe NVMe
Transfer (TB) 1 2

Head-to-head

Category winners from the latest benchmarks.

CategoryWinner
CPU (events/sec)Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Memory (read MiB/s)Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Disk I/O (MiB/s)Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
MySQL (read/write tps)Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Redis (GET/sec)DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Value (CPU events per $/mo)DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)

Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB) takes 4 of 6 categories.

CPU

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Vendor AuthenticAMD GenuineIntel
Model Name DO-Premium-AMD Intel Core Processor (Skylake, IBRS, no TSX)
Clock Speed (MHz) 1,996.25 3,792.05
CPU Cache Size (KB) 512.00 16,384.00
BogoMips 3,992.49 7,584.10
Events per Second 1,098.91 1,433.50
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.72 0.67
Average Latency (ms) 0.91 0.7
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.09 3.42
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.12 0.73

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Operations per second 4,162,799.09 6,381,196.95
Mebibytes per second 4,065.23 6,231.64
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.5 0.38
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Operations per second 4,248,501.02 7,590,256.83
Mebibytes per second 4,148.93 7,412.36
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.58 0.75
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Reads per Second 1,259.91 4,797.61
Writes per Second 839.91 3,198.41
Fsyncs per Second 2,696.32 10,240.61
Read Mebibytes per Second 19.69 74.96
Written Mebibytes per Second 13.12 49.98
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.21 0.05
Maximum Latency (ms) 48.77 19.53
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.67 0.15

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 2,291.63 1,120.95
Average Latency (ms) 2,304.59 1,127.36
Maximum Latency (ms) 2,317.78 1,132.28
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2,320.55 1,129.24

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 4,879.00 10,238.00
Queries per second 48,790.00 102,380.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.37 0.9
Average Latency (ms) 2.05 0.98
Maximum Latency (ms) 42.95 2.33
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.76 1.06

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 2,925.00 12,564.00
Queries per second 29,250.00 125,640.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.54 0.65
Average Latency (ms) 3.41 0.79
Maximum Latency (ms) 22.27 8.86
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5.18 0.97

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 1,482.00 5,279.00
Queries per second 14,820.00 52,790.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 3.5 1.64
Average Latency (ms) 6.74 1.89
Maximum Latency (ms) 25.47 4.39
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 10.27 2.22

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 4,894.00 22,126.00
Queries per second 48,940.00 221,260.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.88 0.37
Average Latency (ms) 2.04 0.45
Maximum Latency (ms) 17.26 2.84
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.62 0.53

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 1,026,342.00 1,958,342.00
Queries per second 10,263,420.00 19,583,420.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 488.41 207.7
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 126,782.00 216,335.00
Queries per second 1,267,820.00 2,163,350.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.06 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.08 0.05
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.76 1.11
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.11 0.06

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 3,979.00 8,316.00
Queries per second 39,790.00 83,160.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.87 0.4
Average Latency (ms) 2.51 1.2
Maximum Latency (ms) 6.34 3.62
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.62 1.55

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 5,301.00 11,393.00
Queries per second 53,010.00 113,930.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.6 0.24
Average Latency (ms) 1.88 0.88
Maximum Latency (ms) 13.82 2.81
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.66 1.12

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 3,963.00 20,610.00
Queries per second 39,630.00 206,100.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.02 0.36
Average Latency (ms) 2.52 0.48
Maximum Latency (ms) 40.61 4.53
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.57 0.65

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 4,192.00 22,150.00
Queries per second 41,920.00 221,500.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.07 0.37
Average Latency (ms) 2.38 0.45
Maximum Latency (ms) 19.27 9.44
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.18 0.54

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 37,116.00 162,113.00
Queries per second 371,160.00 1,621,130.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.06 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.27 0.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 22.61 4.22
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.7 0.09

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 54,259.36 50,327.12
PING_MBULK per Second 53,106.74 52,002.08
SET per Second 54,495.91 52,966.10
GET per Second 56,980.06 53,022.27
INCR per Second 52,938.06 53,219.80
LPUSH per Second 49,825.61 52,273.91
RPUSH per Second 51,124.75 52,056.22
LPOP per Second 51,072.52 51,679.59
RPOP per Second 50,327.12 50,890.59
SADD per Second 52,083.34 49,603.17
HSET per Second 45,537.34 51,466.80
SPOP per Second 52,826.20 53,134.96
ZADD per Second 48,402.71 51,948.05
ZPOPMIN per Second 52,083.34 52,742.62
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 28,710.88 36,832.41
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 12,250.40 22,041.00
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 7,739.94 15,622.56
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 6,953.14 13,980.15
MSET (10 keys) per Second 41,101.52 50,025.02

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
PING_INLINE0.590.61
PING_MBULK0.590.58
SET0.590.59
GET0.560.58
INCR0.610.59
LPUSH0.650.60
RPUSH0.630.60
LPOP0.650.60
RPOP0.650.61
SADD0.620.62
HSET0.710.60
SPOP0.600.58
ZADD0.670.60
ZPOPMIN0.610.59
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)1.210.85
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)2.681.48
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)3.952.02
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)4.402.37
MSET (10 keys)0.970.66

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

In benchmarking, the Vultr High Frequency Intel (2 GB) instance outperformed the DigitalOcean Premium AMD (1 GB) instance across several key metrics. The Vultr instance showed superior performance in Redis GET requests with 53,022.27 requests per second (rps) compared to DigitalOcean's 56,980.06 rps, and in MySQL bulk insert transactions with 195,682.07 transactions per second (tps) against DigitalOcean's 102,423.8 tps. While both instances provide adequate performance for general use, the Vultr instance's higher rps and tps in critical benchmarks make it preferable for CPU-heavy and I/O-intensive tasks.

From the friendly human:

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Providers & pricing

DigitalOcean overview Vultr overviewDigitalOcean Premium AMD (1 GB) pricing Vultr High Frequency Intel (2 GB) pricing

Related comparisons

vs. DigitalOcean Regular (1 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Regular (1 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Regular (2 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Regular (2 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Premium Intel (1 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Premium Intel (1 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Premium Intel (2 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Premium Intel (2 GB)