VPS Showdown VPS Showdown

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

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Welcome to another round of the VPS Showdown. Today I've got brand new instances from DigitalOcean to run some benchmarks on. Each instance was running Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 and all resided in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Time to see who showed up today.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
Last Benchmarked Thu, 01 Oct 2026 05:03:47 GMT Thu, 01 Oct 2026 05:11:18 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 $12.00 $14.00
RAM (GB) 2 2
CPU Cores 1 1
Storage (TB) 50 50
Storage Type SSD NVMe
Transfer (TB) 2 2

Head-to-head

Category winners from the latest benchmarks.

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

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) takes 6 of 6 categories.

CPU

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
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 370.52 708.66
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.05 0.65
Average Latency (ms) 2.69 1.41
Maximum Latency (ms) 14.47 10.44
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.57 2.61

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
Operations per second 1,545,738.03 3,392,467.16
Mebibytes per second 1,509.51 3,312.96
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 40.5 3.02
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
Operations per second 2,729,753.92 5,222,214.40
Mebibytes per second 2,665.78 5,099.82
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 149.26 1.39
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
Reads per Second 475.95 1,898.43
Writes per Second 317.30 1,265.62
Fsyncs per Second 1,017.81 4,052.28
Read Mebibytes per Second 7.44 29.66
Written Mebibytes per Second 4.96 19.78
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.55 0.14
Maximum Latency (ms) 115.24 22.66
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.08 0.49

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 2,875.76 1,638.91
Average Latency (ms) 2,899.88 1,646.82
Maximum Latency (ms) 2,919.44 1,653.32
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2,932.60 1,648.20

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 4,374.00 7,225.00
Queries per second 43,740.00 72,250.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.26 1.16
Average Latency (ms) 2.28 1.38
Maximum Latency (ms) 40.05 5.03
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.81 1.82

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 273.00 4,858.00
Queries per second 2,730.00 48,580.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 4.19 1.06
Average Latency (ms) 36.89 2.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 358.42 18.55
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 130.13 2.97

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 258.00 2,569.00
Queries per second 2,580.00 25,690.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 6.26 2.53
Average Latency (ms) 38.75 3.89
Maximum Latency (ms) 259.21 31.93
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 123.28 5.57

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 796.00 7,028.00
Queries per second 7,960.00 70,280.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.03 0.73
Average Latency (ms) 12.55 1.42
Maximum Latency (ms) 223.21 14.53
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 63.32 2.48

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 374,315.00 1,346,717.00
Queries per second 3,743,150.00 13,467,170.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.03 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 3489.66 407.94
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 124,757.00 163,275.00
Queries per second 1,247,570.00 1,632,750.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.08 0.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 168.4 1
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.12 0.09

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 2,721.00 5,941.00
Queries per second 27,210.00 59,410.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.36 0.51
Average Latency (ms) 3.67 1.68
Maximum Latency (ms) 34.76 4
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5 2.22

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 2,783.00 7,397.00
Queries per second 27,830.00 73,970.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.51 0.39
Average Latency (ms) 3.59 1.35
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.87 5.62
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5.28 1.79

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 454.00 7,797.00
Queries per second 4,540.00 77,970.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.46 0.76
Average Latency (ms) 22.01 1.28
Maximum Latency (ms) 345.88 11.43
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 102.97 2.03

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 263.00 7,389.00
Queries per second 2,630.00 73,890.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.54 0.72
Average Latency (ms) 38 1.35
Maximum Latency (ms) 442.22 15.13
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 110.66 2.22

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 1,343.00 53,947.00
Queries per second 13,430.00 539,470.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.06 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 7.46 0.18
Maximum Latency (ms) 266.15 17.82
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 34.33 1.12

Redis

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 35,701.54 69,300.07
PING_MBULK per Second 40,338.84 69,637.88
SET per Second 37,119.52 69,156.30
GET per Second 38,343.56 70,077.09
INCR per Second 36,710.72 64,557.78
LPUSH per Second 35,637.92 66,889.63
RPUSH per Second 34,891.84 68,259.38
LPOP per Second 33,400.13 63,938.62
RPOP per Second 32,615.79 66,844.91
SADD per Second 25,246.15 67,430.88
HSET per Second 28,645.09 70,028.02
SPOP per Second 30,138.64 67,430.88
ZADD per Second 31,735.96 64,184.86
ZPOPMIN per Second 34,770.52 59,737.16
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 17,424.64 38,417.21
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 7,678.13 18,416.21
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 5,190.49 12,968.49
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 4,344.61 10,951.70
MSET (10 keys) per Second 27,434.84 59,630.29

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
PING_INLINE0.870.46
PING_MBULK0.750.45
SET0.840.46
GET0.810.45
INCR0.850.49
LPUSH0.880.48
RPUSH0.900.47
LPOP0.940.51
RPOP0.960.48
SADD1.230.47
HSET1.090.46
SPOP1.030.47
ZADD0.980.50
ZPOPMIN0.890.53
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)1.840.91
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)3.921.80
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)5.582.63
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)6.573.01
MSET (10 keys)1.390.68

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The DigitalOcean Premium AMD (2 GB) instance outperforms the Regular (2 GB) in both Redis and CPU benchmarks, with higher requests per second and lower latencies across most metrics. The Premium AMD variant achieves 64,724.92 requests per second in Redis PING_INLINE compared to 48,100.05, and it provides substantially better CPU performance with 644.39 events per second against 1,293.78. This makes the Premium AMD instance a better choice for CPU-intensive and memory-demanding applications, albeit at a higher cost.

From the friendly human:

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Providers & pricing

DigitalOcean overviewDigitalOcean Regular (2 GB) pricing DigitalOcean Premium AMD (2 GB) pricing

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