DigitalOcean Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) vs. Vultr Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)

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Same showdown, different day. Today I've spun up some brand new instance from DigitalOcean and Vultr and did some benchmarking. Each instance was running Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and were created in the New York area (or close to it). Time to see who showed up today.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Last Benchmarked Fri, 12 Jun 2026 11:00:52 GMT Thu, 11 Jun 2026 09:00:52 GMT
Linux Distro Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version 6.8.0-71-generic 6.8.0-124-generic
MySQL Version 8.0.46-0ubuntu0.24.04.2 8.0.46-0ubuntu0.24.04.2
Redis Version 7.0.15 7.0.15
Location New York, NY Newark, NJ
Monthly Price $21.00 $20.00
RAM (GB) 2 4
CPU Cores 2 2
Storage (TB) 60 80
Storage Type NVMe SSD
Transfer (TB) 3 3

CPU

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Vendor AuthenticAMD GenuineIntel
Model Name DO-Premium-AMD Intel Xeon Processor (Skylake, IBRS)
Clock Speed (MHz) 1,996.25 2,593.91
CPU Cache Size (KB) 512.00 16,384.00
BogoMips 3,992.50 5,187.81
Events per Second 1,392.66 1,022.39
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.63 0.88
Average Latency (ms) 0.72 0.98
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.02 1.77
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.77 1.21

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Operations per second 4,526,457.94 3,523,809.57
Mebibytes per second 4,420.37 3,441.22
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.34 0.22
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Operations per second 4,557,623.70 3,568,203.77
Mebibytes per second 4,450.80 3,484.57
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.37 1.02
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Reads per Second 1,477.48 2,972.63
Writes per Second 984.95 1,981.75
Fsyncs per Second 3,152.81 6,347.81
Read Mebibytes per Second 23.09 46.45
Written Mebibytes per Second 15.39 30.96
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.18 0.09
Maximum Latency (ms) 13.39 17.12
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.63 0.33

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Minimum Latency (ms) 998.18 899.28
Average Latency (ms) 1,037.01 935.93
Maximum Latency (ms) 1,075.12 969.92
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1,069.86 977.74

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 5,032.00 3,779.00
Queries per second 50,320.00 37,790.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.4 1.84
Average Latency (ms) 1.98 2.64
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.72 24.55
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.57 3.82

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 2,937.00 4,044.00
Queries per second 29,370.00 40,440.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.44 1.4
Average Latency (ms) 3.4 2.47
Maximum Latency (ms) 31.74 13.46
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5.37 3.3

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 1,541.00 1,798.00
Queries per second 15,410.00 17,980.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 3.28 3.86
Average Latency (ms) 6.48 5.56
Maximum Latency (ms) 32.54 27.33
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 10.09 6.91

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 4,186.00 6,405.00
Queries per second 41,860.00 64,050.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.3 0.99
Average Latency (ms) 2.38 1.56
Maximum Latency (ms) 11.72 15.15
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.89 2.03

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 1,201,092.00 865,805.00
Queries per second 12,010,920.00 8,658,050.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 461.52 538.25
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 106,948.00 126,618.00
Queries per second 1,069,480.00 1,266,180.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.05 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.09 0.08
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.37 2.46
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.13 0.11

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 6,174.00 3,674.00
Queries per second 61,740.00 36,740.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.58 1.07
Average Latency (ms) 1.62 2.72
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.38 6.45
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.35 3.55

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 6,088.00 2,728.00
Queries per second 60,880.00 27,280.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.64 1.3
Average Latency (ms) 1.64 3.66
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.33 11.85
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.22 5

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 3,584.00 5,438.00
Queries per second 35,840.00 54,380.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.26 0.99
Average Latency (ms) 2.79 1.84
Maximum Latency (ms) 58.22 13.86
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.74 2.71

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 3,650.00 6,370.00
Queries per second 36,500.00 63,700.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.25 1.01
Average Latency (ms) 2.74 1.57
Maximum Latency (ms) 25.57 8.99
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5 2.07

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 29,082.00 51,180.00
Queries per second 290,820.00 511,800.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.05 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.34 0.19
Maximum Latency (ms) 19.84 6.11
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.14 1.39

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
PING_INLINE per Second 53,908.36 49,677.10
PING_MBULK per Second 55,524.71 45,372.05
SET per Second 57,372.34 45,392.64
GET per Second 55,648.30 53,163.21
INCR per Second 55,959.71 48,732.94
LPUSH per Second 51,046.45 50,327.12
RPUSH per Second 51,098.62 48,285.85
LPOP per Second 43,554.01 48,355.90
RPOP per Second 53,966.54 51,413.88
SADD per Second 54,764.51 48,332.53
HSET per Second 57,438.25 49,285.36
SPOP per Second 57,306.59 48,332.53
ZADD per Second 55,648.30 51,229.51
ZPOPMIN per Second 54,674.69 45,085.66
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 38,744.67 27,122.32
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 20,898.64 12,442.45
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 16,030.78 7,930.21
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 14,336.92 6,902.74
MSET (10 keys) per Second 51,948.05 45,146.73

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
PING_INLINE0.500.53
PING_MBULK0.470.57
SET0.450.57
GET0.470.49
INCR0.460.53
LPUSH0.510.51
RPUSH0.510.54
LPOP0.610.54
RPOP0.490.52
SADD0.480.55
HSET0.450.54
SPOP0.450.54
ZADD0.470.52
ZPOPMIN0.480.57
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.731.02
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.322.29
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)1.723.27
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)1.983.91
MSET (10 keys)0.530.78

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

After analyzing the benchmark results, it is clear that both instances offer strong performance but cater to different needs. The DigitalOcean instance excels in memory operations and Redis throughput, making it ideal for memory-intensive applications and those requiring high Redis performance. In contrast, the Vultr instance demonstrates superior CPU performance and higher overall Redis and MySQL throughput, making it better suited for CPU-intensive tasks, large-scale Redis operations, and databases requiring higher throughput. Therefore, the choice between these instances will largely depend on whether your use case prioritizes memory operations or CPU performance and database throughput.

From the friendly human:

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