DigitalOcean Regular (1 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)

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Welcome to another round of the VPS Showdown. Today I've spun up brand new instance from DigitalOcean to run some benchmarks on. Each instance was spun up with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and were created in the New York area (or close to it). Enough talk. Here's the data.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Last Benchmarked Sat, 30 May 2026 16:00:52 GMT Sun, 31 May 2026 20:00:52 GMT
Linux Distro Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version 6.8.0-71-generic 6.8.0-71-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 New York, NY
Monthly Price $6.00 $56.00
RAM (GB) 1 8
CPU Cores 1 4
Storage (TB) 25 160
Storage Type SSD NVMe
Transfer (TB) 1 5

CPU

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Vendor GenuineIntel AuthenticAMD
Model Name DO-Regular DO-Premium-AMD
Clock Speed (MHz) 2,494.14 1,996.25
CPU Cache Size (KB) 4,096.00 512.00
BogoMips 4,988.28 3,992.50
Events per Second 529.66 1,535.42
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.92 0.59
Average Latency (ms) 1.88 0.65
Maximum Latency (ms) 16.46 0.89
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.43 0.69

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Operations per second 3,987,036.39 4,867,578.39
Mebibytes per second 3,893.59 4,753.49
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.4 0.19
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Operations per second 3,995,737.24 4,347,879.44
Mebibytes per second 3,902.09 4,245.98
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.17 0.56
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Reads per Second 1,945.54 2,384.51
Writes per Second 1,297.00 1,589.67
Fsyncs per Second 4,155.18 5,095.64
Read Mebibytes per Second 30.40 37.26
Written Mebibytes per Second 20.27 24.84
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.13 0.11
Maximum Latency (ms) 9.2 9.42
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.37 0.58

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Minimum Latency (ms) 2,822.79 325.10
Average Latency (ms) 2,870.31 435.66
Maximum Latency (ms) 2,894.40 487.90
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2,880.27 484.44

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 5,259.00 5,392.00
Queries per second 52,590.00 53,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.18 1.37
Average Latency (ms) 1.9 1.85
Maximum Latency (ms) 8 3
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.57 2.35

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 2,346.00 3,296.00
Queries per second 23,460.00 32,960.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.49 1.47
Average Latency (ms) 4.25 3.03
Maximum Latency (ms) 52.22 19.45
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 8.13 4.41

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 1,464.00 1,930.00
Queries per second 14,640.00 19,300.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 3.41 3.41
Average Latency (ms) 6.82 5.18
Maximum Latency (ms) 29.15 26.77
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 11.24 6.55

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 6,314.00 4,756.00
Queries per second 63,140.00 47,560.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.59 1.08
Average Latency (ms) 1.58 2.1
Maximum Latency (ms) 14.38 40.66
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.52 3.25

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 964,103.00 1,434,092.00
Queries per second 9,641,030.00 14,340,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 533.45 418.16
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 149,521.00 125,686.00
Queries per second 1,495,210.00 1,256,860.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.07 0.08
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.86 0.84
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.11 0.11

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 3,958.00 7,055.00
Queries per second 39,580.00 70,550.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.48 0.33
Average Latency (ms) 2.52 1.42
Maximum Latency (ms) 9.22 7.12
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.68 2.07

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 4,379.00 6,592.00
Queries per second 43,790.00 65,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.79 0.43
Average Latency (ms) 2.28 1.52
Maximum Latency (ms) 6.74 3.28
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.36 2.03

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 4,761.00 5,138.00
Queries per second 47,610.00 51,380.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.7 1.07
Average Latency (ms) 2.1 1.94
Maximum Latency (ms) 14.39 39.78
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.75 2.81

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 4,433.00 4,781.00
Queries per second 44,330.00 47,810.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.82 1.13
Average Latency (ms) 2.25 2.09
Maximum Latency (ms) 47.54 19.23
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.1 3.07

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 33,039.00 41,513.00
Queries per second 330,390.00 415,130.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.3 0.24
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.34 11.7
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.7 1.67

Redis

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
PING_INLINE per Second 39,745.63 62,073.25
PING_MBULK per Second 34,602.07 58,719.91
SET per Second 33,036.01 54,171.18
GET per Second 41,186.16 64,308.68
INCR per Second 42,918.46 55,648.30
LPUSH per Second 37,495.31 55,493.89
RPUSH per Second 37,160.91 52,938.06
LPOP per Second 33,955.86 62,539.09
RPOP per Second 38,714.67 66,269.05
SADD per Second 39,416.63 62,189.05
HSET per Second 35,880.88 55,157.20
SPOP per Second 34,506.55 54,674.69
ZADD per Second 26,511.13 55,035.77
ZPOPMIN per Second 31,877.59 55,035.77
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 16,152.48 37,355.25
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 9,134.09 21,715.53
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 5,766.68 16,084.93
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 4,820.90 14,990.26
MSET (10 keys) per Second 27,457.44 57,770.08

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
PING_INLINE0.840.42
PING_MBULK0.940.44
SET1.010.48
GET0.810.40
INCR0.780.47
LPUSH0.890.47
RPUSH0.900.49
LPOP0.990.42
RPOP0.870.39
SADD0.850.42
HSET0.930.47
SPOP0.960.47
ZADD1.240.48
ZPOPMIN1.040.47
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)2.250.78
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)3.931.26
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)6.151.71
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)7.381.91
MSET (10 keys)1.270.47

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

In summary, the DigitalOcean Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) instance shows significantly higher performance across most metrics compared to the Regular (1 GB) instance, especially in CPU-intensive tasks, with higher rates of requests per second and better average latencies in benchmarks for Redis operations, CPU events, and file I/O operations. The Premium instance’s stronger performance is attributable to its higher CPU count, more RAM, and faster NVMe storage. This makes the Premium instance ideal for demanding applications requiring high concurrency and faster data handling, such as large-scale web applications, data processing pipelines, and high-traffic databases, while the Regular instance remains a cost-effective choice for simpler, less resource-intensive applications.

From the friendly human:

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