DigitalOcean Premium AMD (2 GB) vs. Vultr Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Welcome to another round of the VPS Showdown. Today I've spun up brand new instance from DigitalOcean and Vultr to run some benchmarks on. Each instance was running Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and all resided in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Enough talk. Here's the data.
Overview
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Last Benchmarked | Fri, 12 Jun 2026 17:00:52 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 | $14.00 | $20.00 |
| RAM (GB) | 2 | 4 |
| CPU Cores | 1 | 2 |
| Storage (TB) | 50 | 80 |
| Storage Type | NVMe | SSD |
| Transfer (TB) | 2 | 3 |
CPU
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) | 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 | 3,992.49 | 5,187.81 |
| Events per Second | 733.24 | 1,022.39 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.59 | 0.88 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 1.36 | 0.98 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 4.48 | 1.77 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 2.76 | 1.21 |
Memory
Memory Read
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Operations per second | 2,323,574.81 | 3,523,809.57 |
| Mebibytes per second | 2,269.12 | 3,441.22 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 3.43 | 0.22 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
Memory Write
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Operations per second | 3,909,551.77 | 3,568,203.77 |
| Mebibytes per second | 3,817.92 | 3,484.57 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 3.48 | 1.02 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
File I/O
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Reads per Second | 1,678.91 | 2,972.63 |
| Writes per Second | 1,119.27 | 1,981.75 |
| Fsyncs per Second | 3,594.36 | 6,347.81 |
| Read Mebibytes per Second | 26.23 | 46.45 |
| Written Mebibytes per Second | 17.49 | 30.96 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.16 | 0.09 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 8.89 | 17.12 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0.55 | 0.33 |
Mutex
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 1,726.79 | 899.28 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 1,732.93 | 935.93 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 1,738.20 | 969.92 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 1,739.68 | 977.74 |
MySQL
MySQL Read-only
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 6,171.00 | 3,779.00 |
| Queries per second | 61,710.00 | 37,790.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 1.37 | 1.84 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 1.62 | 2.64 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 5.37 | 24.55 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 2.07 | 3.82 |
MySQL Write-only
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 3,401.00 | 4,044.00 |
| Queries per second | 34,010.00 | 40,440.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 1.53 | 1.4 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 2.94 | 2.47 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 17.27 | 13.46 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 4.57 | 3.3 |
MySQL Read/Write
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 1,858.00 | 1,798.00 |
| Queries per second | 18,580.00 | 17,980.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 3.31 | 3.86 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 5.38 | 5.56 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 22.61 | 27.33 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 7.84 | 6.91 |
MySQL INSERT
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 5,725.00 | 6,405.00 |
| Queries per second | 57,250.00 | 64,050.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.92 | 0.99 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 1.74 | 1.56 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 13.24 | 15.15 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 2.86 | 2.03 |
MySQL Bulk INSERT
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 1,230,217.00 | 865,805.00 |
| Queries per second | 12,302,170.00 | 8,658,050.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.01 | 0.01 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 484.84 | 538.25 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
MySQL SELECT
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 136,544.00 | 126,618.00 |
| Queries per second | 1,365,440.00 | 1,266,180.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.06 | 0.05 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.07 | 0.08 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 1.13 | 2.46 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0.1 | 0.11 |
MySQL SELECT (Random Points)
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 6,715.00 | 3,674.00 |
| Queries per second | 67,150.00 | 36,740.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.49 | 1.07 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 1.49 | 2.72 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 9.14 | 6.45 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 2.03 | 3.55 |
MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 7,036.00 | 2,728.00 |
| Queries per second | 70,360.00 | 27,280.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.39 | 1.3 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 1.42 | 3.66 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 3.38 | 11.85 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 1.93 | 5 |
MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 5,287.00 | 5,438.00 |
| Queries per second | 52,870.00 | 54,380.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.94 | 0.99 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 1.89 | 1.84 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 33.15 | 13.86 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 3.13 | 2.71 |
MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 5,525.00 | 6,370.00 |
| Queries per second | 55,250.00 | 63,700.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.84 | 1.01 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 1.81 | 1.57 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 18.81 | 8.99 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 2.81 | 2.07 |
MySQL DELETE
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 34,866.00 | 51,180.00 |
| Queries per second | 348,660.00 | 511,800.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.06 | 0.05 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.29 | 0.19 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 22.36 | 6.11 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 1.73 | 1.39 |
Redis
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| PING_INLINE per Second | 37,979.49 | 49,677.10 |
| PING_MBULK per Second | 37,893.14 | 45,372.05 |
| SET per Second | 37,397.16 | 45,392.64 |
| GET per Second | 37,285.61 | 53,163.21 |
| INCR per Second | 39,001.56 | 48,732.94 |
| LPUSH per Second | 37,481.26 | 50,327.12 |
| RPUSH per Second | 34,118.05 | 48,285.85 |
| LPOP per Second | 36,088.05 | 48,355.90 |
| RPOP per Second | 35,803.80 | 51,413.88 |
| SADD per Second | 37,050.76 | 48,332.53 |
| HSET per Second | 37,271.71 | 49,285.36 |
| SPOP per Second | 38,699.69 | 48,332.53 |
| ZADD per Second | 37,009.62 | 51,229.51 |
| ZPOPMIN per Second | 37,792.89 | 45,085.66 |
| LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second | 25,588.54 | 27,122.32 |
| LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second | 13,787.40 | 12,442.45 |
| LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second | 9,898.05 | 7,930.21 |
| LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second | 8,331.94 | 6,902.74 |
| MSET (10 keys) per Second | 32,786.89 | 45,146.73 |
Redis Average Latency (ms)
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| PING_INLINE | 0.89 | 0.53 |
| PING_MBULK | 0.89 | 0.57 |
| SET | 0.91 | 0.57 |
| GET | 0.91 | 0.49 |
| INCR | 0.87 | 0.53 |
| LPUSH | 0.91 | 0.51 |
| RPUSH | 0.99 | 0.54 |
| LPOP | 0.95 | 0.54 |
| RPOP | 0.95 | 0.52 |
| SADD | 0.92 | 0.55 |
| HSET | 0.91 | 0.54 |
| SPOP | 0.88 | 0.54 |
| ZADD | 0.92 | 0.52 |
| ZPOPMIN | 0.90 | 0.57 |
| LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) | 1.36 | 1.02 |
| LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) | 2.57 | 2.29 |
| LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) | 3.59 | 3.27 |
| LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) | 4.22 | 3.91 |
| MSET (10 keys) | 1.07 | 0.78 |
Conclusion
From the friendly robots:
After analyzing the benchmarks from both providers, it's clear that the Vultr Cloud Compute instance (2 cores, 4 GB RAM) outperforms the DigitalOcean Premium AMD instance (1 core, 2 GB RAM) in most areas, particularly in Redis benchmarks with higher requests per second (rps) and lower latency across most commands, and in CPU, file I/O, and memory operations which all show faster execution times and higher throughput. The Vultr instance also provides more RAM and CPU cores, which contribute to its overall superior performance, making it an ideal choice for CPU-intensive, I/O-heavy, or memory-demanding workloads. However, DigitalOcean's instance is more cost-effective and could still serve adequately for less demanding applications or development environments where absolute performance isn't the primary concern.
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 links for DigitalOcean and Vultr.
You can also support me directly by buying me a coffee.