DigitalOcean Regular (2 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)

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My friend, I'm so glad you're here! Today I've spun up brand new instance from DigitalOcean and ran my world famous suite of benchmarking scripts. Each instance was running 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 (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Last Benchmarked Tue, 12 May 2026 23:00:52 GMT Wed, 13 May 2026 09:00:52 GMT
Linux Distro Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version 6.8.0-71-generic 6.8.0-71-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 $12.00 $56.00
RAM (GB) 2 8
CPU Cores 1 4
Storage (TB) 50 160
Storage Type SSD NVMe
Transfer (TB) 2 5

CPU

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
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 3,992.50
Events per Second 408.72 1,440.13
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.98 0.62
Average Latency (ms) 2.44 0.69
Maximum Latency (ms) 30.57 0.99
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.1 0.74

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Operations per second 1,633,276.41 4,607,623.18
Mebibytes per second 1,595.00 4,499.63
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.35 0.25
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Operations per second 1,592,941.48 4,250,543.24
Mebibytes per second 1,555.61 4,150.92
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.53 0.24
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Reads per Second 1,584.78 2,071.41
Writes per Second 1,056.52 1,380.94
Fsyncs per Second 3,385.97 4,423.81
Read Mebibytes per Second 24.76 32.37
Written Mebibytes per Second 16.51 21.58
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.16 0.13
Maximum Latency (ms) 20.31 11.5
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.51 0.63

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Minimum Latency (ms) 2,434.32 387.26
Average Latency (ms) 2,473.55 503.53
Maximum Latency (ms) 2,489.41 571.47
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2,493.86 569.67

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 4,752.00 5,335.00
Queries per second 47,520.00 53,350.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.23 1.35
Average Latency (ms) 2.1 1.87
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.76 4.01
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.66 2.39

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 1,930.00 2,633.00
Queries per second 19,300.00 26,330.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.65 1.64
Average Latency (ms) 5.18 3.79
Maximum Latency (ms) 56.83 17.49
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 7.98 5.88

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 1,306.00 1,598.00
Queries per second 13,060.00 15,980.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 4.6 2.99
Average Latency (ms) 7.65 6.25
Maximum Latency (ms) 28.54 47.79
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 10.09 9.39

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 3,148.00 3,813.00
Queries per second 31,480.00 38,130.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.72 1.33
Average Latency (ms) 3.17 2.62
Maximum Latency (ms) 32.67 21.61
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.41 4.33

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 669,209.00 1,317,592.00
Queries per second 6,692,090.00 13,175,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.02 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 772.1 494.55
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 136,020.00 128,652.00
Queries per second 1,360,200.00 1,286,520.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.07 0.08
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.33 0.43
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.11 0.11

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 3,617.00 6,602.00
Queries per second 36,170.00 66,020.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.82 0.51
Average Latency (ms) 2.76 1.51
Maximum Latency (ms) 12.27 9.03
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.82 2.14

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 3,087.00 6,138.00
Queries per second 30,870.00 61,380.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.67 0.54
Average Latency (ms) 3.23 1.63
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.52 3.46
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5.18 2.18

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 2,586.00 4,416.00
Queries per second 25,860.00 44,160.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.8 1.05
Average Latency (ms) 3.86 2.26
Maximum Latency (ms) 45.13 16.43
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 6.21 3.49

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 3,094.00 3,561.00
Queries per second 30,940.00 35,610.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.83 1.35
Average Latency (ms) 3.23 2.81
Maximum Latency (ms) 35.75 32.29
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.65 4.41

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 19,562.00 25,316.00
Queries per second 195,620.00 253,160.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.51 0.39
Maximum Latency (ms) 32.94 24.37
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.02 2.48

Redis

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
PING_INLINE per Second 39,729.84 50,025.02
PING_MBULK per Second 42,176.30 48,123.20
SET per Second 40,833.00 54,318.30
GET per Second 34,590.11 50,428.64
INCR per Second 35,410.77 48,851.98
LPUSH per Second 39,184.95 50,327.12
RPUSH per Second 36,509.68 49,164.21
LPOP per Second 36,791.76 48,590.86
RPOP per Second 38,834.95 51,519.84
SADD per Second 35,727.05 50,607.29
HSET per Second 35,790.98 60,532.69
SPOP per Second 39,478.88 60,975.61
ZADD per Second 38,850.04 56,433.41
ZPOPMIN per Second 40,338.84 49,800.80
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 17,461.15 36,710.72
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 7,711.29 22,624.43
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 4,860.50 17,003.91
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 4,094.67 14,465.50
MSET (10 keys) per Second 32,041.01 51,440.33

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
PING_INLINE0.830.53
PING_MBULK0.780.54
SET0.820.48
GET0.940.51
INCR0.930.54
LPUSH0.850.52
RPUSH0.910.53
LPOP0.920.54
RPOP0.870.51
SADD0.920.52
HSET0.930.43
SPOP0.840.43
ZADD0.860.46
ZPOPMIN0.820.52
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)2.050.79
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)4.591.25
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)7.191.62
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)8.421.91
MSET (10 keys)1.120.52

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

Comparing the two DigitalOcean instances, the Regular (2 GB) and Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 cores), reveals notable differences in performance across various benchmarks. The Premium instance boasts higher CPU efficiency, with more cores and higher BogoMIPS, enabling better handling of CPU-intensive tasks and multi-threaded applications. It also shows superior performance in Redis operations, achieving higher requests per second with lower latencies across most commands. The Premium instance also demonstrates better file I/O and memory performance, with higher throughput, lower latencies, and more operations per second, reflecting its enhanced capabilities. In contrast, the Regular instance provides a cost-effective solution for smaller, less resource-demanding applications, offering acceptable performance for single-threaded tasks and lighter workloads. Ideal use cases for the Premium instance include high-concurrency web services, data-intensive applications, and any scenario requiring substantial CPU, memory, and I/O throughput, while the Regular instance is well-suited for development environments, small websites, and applications with modest resource requirements.

From the friendly human:

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