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

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Same showdown, different day. Today I've spun up brand new instance from DigitalOcean and Vultr and ran my world famous suite of benchmarking scripts. All instances were spun up with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and were created in the New York area (or close to it). Without further ado, here's the results.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Last Benchmarked Sun, 31 May 2026 03:00:52 GMT Sun, 31 May 2026 13:00:55 GMT
Linux Distro Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version 6.8.0-71-generic 6.8.0-117-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 Newark, NJ
Monthly Price $21.00 $18.00
RAM (GB) 2 2
CPU Cores 2 2
Storage (TB) 60 80
Storage Type NVMe NVMe
Transfer (TB) 3 3

CPU

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Vendor AuthenticAMD GenuineIntel
Model Name DO-Premium-AMD Intel Core Processor (Skylake, IBRS, no TSX)
Clock Speed (MHz) 1,996.25 3,791.98
CPU Cache Size (KB) 512.00 16,384.00
BogoMips 3,992.50 7,583.95
Events per Second 1,599.39 1,552.05
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.59 0.62
Average Latency (ms) 0.62 0.64
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.82 4.61
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.67 0.69

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Operations per second 5,207,157.62 7,875,668.83
Mebibytes per second 5,085.11 7,691.08
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.2 0.12
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Operations per second 5,245,096.07 7,729,812.11
Mebibytes per second 5,122.16 7,548.64
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.13 0.16
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Reads per Second 1,715.61 4,671.85
Writes per Second 1,143.67 3,114.56
Fsyncs per Second 3,669.98 9,976.90
Read Mebibytes per Second 26.81 73.00
Written Mebibytes per Second 17.87 48.67
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.15 0.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 16.22 2.76
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.54 0.17

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Minimum Latency (ms) 556.73 543.27
Average Latency (ms) 825.56 554.74
Maximum Latency (ms) 865.15 563.70
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 861.95 559.50

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 6,259.00 10,621.00
Queries per second 62,590.00 106,210.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.31 0.86
Average Latency (ms) 1.6 0.94
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.28 2.5
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.96 1.03

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 3,970.00 10,229.00
Queries per second 39,700.00 102,290.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.36 0.64
Average Latency (ms) 2.52 0.98
Maximum Latency (ms) 11.04 2.08
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.55 1.23

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 2,013.00 5,072.00
Queries per second 20,130.00 50,720.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 3.03 1.59
Average Latency (ms) 4.96 1.97
Maximum Latency (ms) 24.99 3.94
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 6.91 2.39

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 5,675.00 16,038.00
Queries per second 56,750.00 160,380.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.96 0.38
Average Latency (ms) 1.76 0.62
Maximum Latency (ms) 12.44 13.18
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.91 0.8

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 1,463,217.00 2,424,342.00
Queries per second 14,632,170.00 24,243,420.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 443.24 205.81
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 125,762.00 241,313.00
Queries per second 1,257,620.00 2,413,130.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.05 0.03
Average Latency (ms) 0.08 0.04
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.37 0.76
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.11 0.05

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 7,556.00 12,080.00
Queries per second 75,560.00 120,800.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.51 0.21
Average Latency (ms) 1.32 0.83
Maximum Latency (ms) 6.33 3.31
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.79 1.04

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 6,802.00 10,527.00
Queries per second 68,020.00 105,270.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.57 0.16
Average Latency (ms) 1.47 0.95
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.15 3.25
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.96 1.23

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 5,367.00 17,123.00
Queries per second 53,670.00 171,230.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.96 0.38
Average Latency (ms) 1.86 0.58
Maximum Latency (ms) 13.89 2
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.71 0.78

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 5,465.00 16,979.00
Queries per second 54,650.00 169,790.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.97 0.38
Average Latency (ms) 1.83 0.59
Maximum Latency (ms) 15.94 4.13
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.76 0.8

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 59,025.00 156,424.00
Queries per second 590,250.00 1,564,240.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.03
Average Latency (ms) 0.17 0.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 9.29 4.87
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.3 0.07

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
PING_INLINE per Second 52,631.58 88,652.48
PING_MBULK per Second 54,436.58 89,605.73
SET per Second 54,112.55 90,171.33
GET per Second 55,370.98 90,579.71
INCR per Second 54,141.85 90,744.10
LPUSH per Second 53,908.36 90,497.73
RPUSH per Second 53,792.36 90,415.91
LPOP per Second 52,938.06 90,909.09
RPOP per Second 54,141.85 90,661.83
SADD per Second 53,248.14 90,252.70
HSET per Second 53,908.36 90,415.91
SPOP per Second 52,521.01 89,928.05
ZADD per Second 53,850.30 90,415.91
ZPOPMIN per Second 54,259.36 90,009.01
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 39,093.04 66,533.60
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 24,962.56 36,179.45
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 18,402.65 26,239.83
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 15,748.03 22,547.91
MSET (10 keys) per Second 68,212.83 88,105.73

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
PING_INLINE0.510.30
PING_MBULK0.480.29
SET0.480.29
GET0.470.29
INCR0.480.28
LPUSH0.480.29
RPUSH0.480.29
LPOP0.490.28
RPOP0.480.28
SADD0.490.29
HSET0.480.29
SPOP0.490.29
ZADD0.480.29
ZPOPMIN0.480.29
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.680.39
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.080.71
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)1.450.97
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)1.821.14
MSET (10 keys)0.390.30

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

When comparing the benchmark performance between the DigitalOcean Premium AMD instance and the Vultr High Frequency Intel instance, the Vultr instance generally exhibits higher overall performance, particularly in CPU-intensive tasks and Redis operations, where it shows significantly higher request rates per second and lower latencies across various benchmarks. The Intel processor's higher clock speed and slightly better cache sizes contribute to its superior performance in CPU and memory operations. However, the DigitalOcean instance performs well in file I/O and memory operations, with notably lower latencies and higher throughput in file read and write operations. The Vultr instance might be more suitable for applications that benefit from high CPU performance and lower latency in memory operations, while the DigitalOcean instance could be advantageous for workloads that are more I/O heavy or require lower latencies in file and memory operations.

From the friendly human:

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