DigitalOcean Premium AMD (4 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 some benchmarks. 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 (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Last Benchmarked Sat, 30 May 2026 17:00:53 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 $28.00 $18.00
RAM (GB) 4 2
CPU Cores 2 2
Storage (TB) 80 80
Storage Type NVMe NVMe
Transfer (TB) 2 3

CPU

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 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 3,992.49 7,583.95
Events per Second 1,507.58 1,552.05
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.6 0.62
Average Latency (ms) 0.66 0.64
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.5 4.61
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.74 0.69

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Operations per second 4,451,201.81 7,875,668.83
Mebibytes per second 4,346.88 7,691.08
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.42 0.12
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Operations per second 4,886,468.54 7,729,812.11
Mebibytes per second 4,771.94 7,548.64
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.29 0.16
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Reads per Second 1,632.78 4,671.85
Writes per Second 1,088.52 3,114.56
Fsyncs per Second 3,483.47 9,976.90
Read Mebibytes per Second 25.51 73.00
Written Mebibytes per Second 17.01 48.67
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.16 0.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 16.1 2.76
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.61 0.17

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Minimum Latency (ms) 882.26 543.27
Average Latency (ms) 948.17 554.74
Maximum Latency (ms) 982.40 563.70
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 977.74 559.50

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 6,052.00 10,621.00
Queries per second 60,520.00 106,210.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.36 0.86
Average Latency (ms) 1.65 0.94
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.73 2.5
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.11 1.03

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 2,898.00 10,229.00
Queries per second 28,980.00 102,290.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.44 0.64
Average Latency (ms) 3.45 0.98
Maximum Latency (ms) 93.68 2.08
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5.28 1.23

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 1,886.00 5,072.00
Queries per second 18,860.00 50,720.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 3.15 1.59
Average Latency (ms) 5.3 1.97
Maximum Latency (ms) 84.59 3.94
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 7.43 2.39

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 4,486.00 16,038.00
Queries per second 44,860.00 160,380.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.06 0.38
Average Latency (ms) 2.23 0.62
Maximum Latency (ms) 18.55 13.18
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.68 0.8

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 1,434,092.00 2,424,342.00
Queries per second 14,340,920.00 24,243,420.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 414.91 205.81
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 119,923.00 241,313.00
Queries per second 1,199,230.00 2,413,130.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.05 0.03
Average Latency (ms) 0.08 0.04
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.68 0.76
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.11 0.05

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 7,111.00 12,080.00
Queries per second 71,110.00 120,800.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.49 0.21
Average Latency (ms) 1.4 0.83
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.53 3.31
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2 1.04

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 6,087.00 10,527.00
Queries per second 60,870.00 105,270.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.44 0.16
Average Latency (ms) 1.64 0.95
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.34 3.25
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.22 1.23

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 4,391.00 17,123.00
Queries per second 43,910.00 171,230.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.02 0.38
Average Latency (ms) 2.28 0.58
Maximum Latency (ms) 16.67 2
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.68 0.78

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 4,148.00 16,979.00
Queries per second 41,480.00 169,790.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.28 0.38
Average Latency (ms) 2.41 0.59
Maximum Latency (ms) 18.58 4.13
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.82 0.8

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 26,739.00 156,424.00
Queries per second 267,390.00 1,564,240.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.05 0.03
Average Latency (ms) 0.37 0.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 14.65 4.87
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.39 0.07

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
PING_INLINE per Second 60,386.47 88,652.48
PING_MBULK per Second 58,962.27 89,605.73
SET per Second 50,100.20 90,171.33
GET per Second 51,387.46 90,579.71
INCR per Second 51,786.64 90,744.10
LPUSH per Second 53,276.50 90,497.73
RPUSH per Second 50,454.09 90,415.91
LPOP per Second 50,327.12 90,909.09
RPOP per Second 50,050.05 90,661.83
SADD per Second 46,576.62 90,252.70
HSET per Second 49,701.79 90,415.91
SPOP per Second 48,379.30 89,928.05
ZADD per Second 49,950.05 90,415.91
ZPOPMIN per Second 49,455.98 90,009.01
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 39,032.00 66,533.60
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 22,456.77 36,179.45
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 16,097.88 26,239.83
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 14,760.15 22,547.91
MSET (10 keys) per Second 50,581.69 88,105.73

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
PING_INLINE0.440.30
PING_MBULK0.440.29
SET0.520.29
GET0.510.29
INCR0.500.28
LPUSH0.490.29
RPUSH0.520.29
LPOP0.520.28
RPOP0.530.28
SADD0.570.29
HSET0.530.29
SPOP0.540.29
ZADD0.520.29
ZPOPMIN0.530.29
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.700.39
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.210.71
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)1.740.97
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)1.911.14
MSET (10 keys)0.590.30

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

In comparing the DigitalOcean Premium AMD instance and the Vultr High Frequency Intel instance, the latter shows a considerable edge in terms of raw performance, especially in Redis benchmarks where it achieves significantly higher requests per second with lower latencies across a range of operations. The Vultr instance also outperforms in MySQL OLTP operations and CPU benchmarks. However, the DigitalOcean instance demonstrates excellent file I/O performance with higher throughput and lower latencies. If CPU-intensive and memory-bound tasks are the primary use cases, the Vultr instance would be preferable, but for workloads that benefit more from high-speed storage and file I/O operations, the DigitalOcean instance would be the better choice. Both instances offer good value in their respective areas of strength.

From the friendly human:

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