DigitalOcean Regular (2 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)

vs.

My friend, I'm so glad you're here! Today I've spun up some brand new instance from DigitalOcean and ran some benchmarks. All instances were running Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and were created in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Enough talk. Here's the data.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Last Benchmarked Tue, 12 May 2026 23:00:52 GMT Tue, 12 May 2026 11:00:52 GMT
Linux Distro Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version 6.8.0-71-generic 6.8.0-71-generic
MySQL Version 8.0.45-0ubuntu0.24.04.1 8.0.45-0ubuntu0.24.04.1
Redis Version 7.0.15 7.0.15
Location New York, NY New York, NY
Monthly Price $12.00 $21.00
RAM (GB) 2 2
CPU Cores 1 2
Storage (TB) 50 60
Storage Type SSD NVMe
Transfer (TB) 2 3

CPU

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Vendor GenuineIntel AuthenticAMD
Model Name DO-Regular DO-Premium-AMD
Clock Speed (MHz) 2,294.61 1,996.25
CPU Cache Size (KB) 4,096.00 512.00
BogoMips 4,589.21 3,992.49
Events per Second 408.72 1,560.26
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.98 0.59
Average Latency (ms) 2.44 0.64
Maximum Latency (ms) 30.57 2.06
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.1 0.69

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Operations per second 1,633,276.41 4,876,345.27
Mebibytes per second 1,595.00 4,762.06
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.35 0.21
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Operations per second 1,592,941.48 4,927,449.86
Mebibytes per second 1,555.61 4,811.96
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.53 0.19
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Reads per Second 1,584.78 1,725.18
Writes per Second 1,056.52 1,150.12
Fsyncs per Second 3,385.97 3,684.17
Read Mebibytes per Second 24.76 26.96
Written Mebibytes per Second 16.51 17.97
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.16 0.15
Maximum Latency (ms) 20.31 6.97
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.51 0.55

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Minimum Latency (ms) 2,434.32 861.23
Average Latency (ms) 2,473.55 896.40
Maximum Latency (ms) 2,489.41 924.38
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2,493.86 926.33

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 4,752.00 5,447.00
Queries per second 47,520.00 54,470.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.23 1.4
Average Latency (ms) 2.1 1.83
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.76 3.52
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.66 2.26

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 1,930.00 3,769.00
Queries per second 19,300.00 37,690.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.65 1.41
Average Latency (ms) 5.18 2.65
Maximum Latency (ms) 56.83 21.31
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 7.98 3.82

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 1,306.00 2,009.00
Queries per second 13,060.00 20,090.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 4.6 3.1
Average Latency (ms) 7.65 4.98
Maximum Latency (ms) 28.54 15.84
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 10.09 6.79

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 3,148.00 5,188.00
Queries per second 31,480.00 51,880.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.72 1.06
Average Latency (ms) 3.17 1.92
Maximum Latency (ms) 32.67 12.78
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.41 3.02

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 669,209.00 1,375,842.00
Queries per second 6,692,090.00 13,758,420.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.02 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 772.1 448.37
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 136,020.00 119,183.00
Queries per second 1,360,200.00 1,191,830.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.07 0.08
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.33 1.81
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.11 0.11

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 3,617.00 7,445.00
Queries per second 36,170.00 74,450.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.82 0.43
Average Latency (ms) 2.76 1.34
Maximum Latency (ms) 12.27 8.47
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.82 1.89

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 3,087.00 6,562.00
Queries per second 30,870.00 65,620.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.67 0.49
Average Latency (ms) 3.23 1.52
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.52 3.46
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5.18 2.03

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 2,586.00 4,890.00
Queries per second 25,860.00 48,900.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.8 1.01
Average Latency (ms) 3.86 2.04
Maximum Latency (ms) 45.13 17.91
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 6.21 3.13

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 3,094.00 5,023.00
Queries per second 30,940.00 50,230.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.83 1.12
Average Latency (ms) 3.23 1.99
Maximum Latency (ms) 35.75 28.99
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.65 2.97

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 19,562.00 41,819.00
Queries per second 195,620.00 418,190.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.51 0.24
Maximum Latency (ms) 32.94 14.59
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.02 1.61

Redis

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
PING_INLINE per Second 39,729.84 50,581.69
PING_MBULK per Second 42,176.30 50,100.20
SET per Second 40,833.00 49,751.24
GET per Second 34,590.11 49,925.11
INCR per Second 35,410.77 51,733.06
LPUSH per Second 39,184.95 52,521.01
RPUSH per Second 36,509.68 50,864.70
LPOP per Second 36,791.76 46,663.56
RPOP per Second 38,834.95 47,664.44
SADD per Second 35,727.05 50,813.01
HSET per Second 35,790.98 51,308.36
SPOP per Second 39,478.88 49,677.10
ZADD per Second 38,850.04 49,358.34
ZPOPMIN per Second 40,338.84 48,851.98
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 17,461.15 40,355.12
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 7,711.29 23,148.15
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 4,860.50 16,949.15
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 4,094.67 15,008.25
MSET (10 keys) per Second 32,041.01 52,576.24

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
PING_INLINE0.830.52
PING_MBULK0.780.52
SET0.820.53
GET0.940.52
INCR0.930.50
LPUSH0.850.50
RPUSH0.910.51
LPOP0.920.56
RPOP0.870.55
SADD0.920.51
HSET0.930.51
SPOP0.840.52
ZADD0.860.53
ZPOPMIN0.820.54
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)2.050.66
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)4.591.15
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)7.191.58
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)8.421.87
MSET (10 keys)1.120.53

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The DigitalOcean Premium AMD instance shows significantly better performance in most benchmarks compared to the Regular instance, particularly in multi-threaded operations where it delivers higher request rates per second across Redis operations and better overall throughput in file I/O and memory operations. The Premium AMD instance's dual CPU cores and higher clock speed contribute to its superior performance in CPU-bound tasks and general computing workloads. The Regular instance, while cost-effective, is more suitable for low to moderately demanding applications. For users needing higher performance, particularly in data processing, web services, or any CPU-intensive tasks, the Premium AMD instance is the clear choice due to its enhanced speed and efficiency, despite being more expensive.

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 directly by buying me a coffee.