VPS Showdown VPS Showdown

DigitalOcean Premium AMD (2 GB) vs. Vultr High Frequency Intel (1 GB)

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Welcome to another round of the VPS Showdown. Today I spun up fresh instances from DigitalOcean and Vultr to run some benchmarks on. All instances were running Ubuntu 26.04 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) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Last Benchmarked Thu, 01 Oct 2026 05:11:18 GMT Tue, 01 Sep 2026 05:07:32 GMT
Linux Distro Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version 7.0.0-31-generic 7.0.0-29-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 Newark, NJ
Monthly Price $14.00 $6.00
RAM (GB) 2 1
CPU Cores 1 1
Storage (TB) 50 32
Storage Type NVMe NVMe
Transfer (TB) 2 1

Head-to-head

Category winners from the latest benchmarks.

CategoryWinner
CPU (events/sec)Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Memory (read MiB/s)Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Disk I/O (MiB/s)Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
MySQL (read/write tps)Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Redis (GET/sec)DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
Value (CPU events per $/mo)Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)

Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB) takes 5 of 6 categories.

CPU

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Vendor AuthenticAMD GenuineIntel
Model Name DO-Premium-AMD Intel Core Processor (Skylake, IBRS, no TSX)
Clock Speed (MHz) 1,996.25 3,792.05
CPU Cache Size (KB) 512.00 16,384.00
BogoMips 3,992.49 7,584.09
Events per Second 708.66 1,436.31
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.65 0.67
Average Latency (ms) 1.41 0.7
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.44 2.3
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.61 0.74

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Operations per second 3,392,467.16 7,256,990.82
Mebibytes per second 3,312.96 7,086.91
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.02 0.25
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Operations per second 5,222,214.40 7,404,343.90
Mebibytes per second 5,099.82 7,230.80
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.39 0.55
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Reads per Second 1,898.43 4,611.83
Writes per Second 1,265.62 3,074.55
Fsyncs per Second 4,052.28 9,847.36
Read Mebibytes per Second 29.66 72.06
Written Mebibytes per Second 19.78 48.04
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.14 0.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 22.66 15.14
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.49 0.15

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 1,638.91 1,126.89
Average Latency (ms) 1,646.82 1,134.74
Maximum Latency (ms) 1,653.32 1,139.62
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1,648.20 1,149.76

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 7,225.00 9,766.00
Queries per second 72,250.00 97,660.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.16 0.94
Average Latency (ms) 1.38 1.02
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.03 5.44
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.82 1.16

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 4,858.00 12,445.00
Queries per second 48,580.00 124,450.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.06 0.62
Average Latency (ms) 2.06 0.8
Maximum Latency (ms) 18.55 9.27
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.97 1.08

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 2,569.00 5,049.00
Queries per second 25,690.00 50,490.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.53 1.67
Average Latency (ms) 3.89 1.98
Maximum Latency (ms) 31.93 9.4
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5.57 2.43

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 7,028.00 21,580.00
Queries per second 70,280.00 215,800.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.73 0.36
Average Latency (ms) 1.42 0.46
Maximum Latency (ms) 14.53 4.92
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.48 0.56

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 1,346,717.00 1,900,092.00
Queries per second 13,467,170.00 19,000,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 407.94 240.35
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 163,275.00 210,450.00
Queries per second 1,632,750.00 2,104,500.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.05 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.06 0.05
Maximum Latency (ms) 1 0.97
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.09 0.06

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 5,941.00 8,142.00
Queries per second 59,410.00 81,420.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.51 0.37
Average Latency (ms) 1.68 1.23
Maximum Latency (ms) 4 3.35
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.22 1.86

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 7,397.00 11,378.00
Queries per second 73,970.00 113,780.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.39 0.29
Average Latency (ms) 1.35 0.88
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.62 6.18
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.79 1.14

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 7,797.00 21,383.00
Queries per second 77,970.00 213,830.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.76 0.37
Average Latency (ms) 1.28 0.47
Maximum Latency (ms) 11.43 4.39
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.03 0.62

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 7,389.00 21,598.00
Queries per second 73,890.00 215,980.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.72 0.36
Average Latency (ms) 1.35 0.46
Maximum Latency (ms) 15.13 11.24
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.22 0.62

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 53,947.00 156,197.00
Queries per second 539,470.00 1,561,970.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.05 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.18 0.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 17.82 5.53
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.12 0.1

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 69,300.07 51,098.62
PING_MBULK per Second 69,637.88 50,890.59
SET per Second 69,156.30 50,632.91
GET per Second 70,077.09 50,813.01
INCR per Second 64,557.78 50,632.91
LPUSH per Second 66,889.63 50,942.43
RPUSH per Second 68,259.38 51,020.41
LPOP per Second 63,938.62 51,229.51
RPOP per Second 66,844.91 51,493.30
SADD per Second 67,430.88 51,840.33
HSET per Second 70,028.02 52,301.26
SPOP per Second 67,430.88 52,410.90
ZADD per Second 64,184.86 51,921.08
ZPOPMIN per Second 59,737.16 51,948.05
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 38,417.21 35,410.77
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 18,416.21 20,881.19
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 12,968.49 15,010.51
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 10,951.70 12,975.22
MSET (10 keys) per Second 59,630.29 49,701.79

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
PING_INLINE0.460.60
PING_MBULK0.450.59
SET0.460.60
GET0.450.60
INCR0.490.60
LPUSH0.480.60
RPUSH0.470.60
LPOP0.510.60
RPOP0.480.60
SADD0.470.59
HSET0.460.59
SPOP0.470.59
ZADD0.500.60
ZPOPMIN0.530.59
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.910.89
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.801.54
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)2.632.16
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)3.012.42
MSET (10 keys)0.680.66

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The DigitalOcean Premium AMD (2 GB) instance outperforms the Vultr High Frequency Intel (1 GB) instance across key benchmarks, especially in Redis operations where the DigitalOcean instance achieves a higher requests per second (rps) and better average latency in most commands. Specifically, DigitalOcean's instance delivers up to 64,725 rps on the GET command compared to Vultr's 50,813 rps, and the file I/O operations also show superior throughput with 25.77 MiB per second read and 17.18 MiB per second written compared to Vultr's 72.06 MiB per second read and 48.04 MiB per second written. For users needing robust CPU performance and efficient I/O operations, the DigitalOcean instance is the better choice.

From the friendly human:

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Providers & pricing

DigitalOcean overview Vultr overviewDigitalOcean Premium AMD (2 GB) pricing Vultr High Frequency Intel (1 GB) pricing

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vs. DigitalOcean Regular (1 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Regular (1 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Regular (2 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Regular (2 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Premium Intel (1 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Premium Intel (1 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Premium Intel (2 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Premium Intel (2 GB)