DigitalOcean Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) vs. Vultr Cloud Compute (2 GB)

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Same showdown, different day. Today I've spun up brand new instance from DigitalOcean and Vultr and ran my world famous suite of benchmarking scripts. All instances were spun up with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and were created in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Enough talk. Here's the data.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB)
Last Benchmarked Sun, 31 May 2026 20:00:52 GMT Tue, 02 Jun 2026 09:00:53 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 $56.00 $10.00
RAM (GB) 8 2
CPU Cores 4 1
Storage (TB) 160 50
Storage Type NVMe SSD
Transfer (TB) 5 2

CPU

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB)
Vendor AuthenticAMD GenuineIntel
Model Name DO-Premium-AMD Intel Core Processor (Skylake, IBRS, no TSX)
Clock Speed (MHz) 1,996.25 3,792.00
CPU Cache Size (KB) 512.00 16,384.00
BogoMips 3,992.50 7,583.99
Events per Second 1,535.42 1,583.05
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.59 0.6
Average Latency (ms) 0.65 0.63
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.89 1.47
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.69 0.67

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB)
Operations per second 4,867,578.39 7,845,063.44
Mebibytes per second 4,753.49 7,661.19
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.19 0.22
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB)
Operations per second 4,347,879.44 7,631,333.85
Mebibytes per second 4,245.98 7,452.47
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.56 0.29
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB)
Reads per Second 2,384.51 5,439.09
Writes per Second 1,589.67 3,626.06
Fsyncs per Second 5,095.64 11,608.88
Read Mebibytes per Second 37.26 84.99
Written Mebibytes per Second 24.84 56.66
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.11 0.05
Maximum Latency (ms) 9.42 9.72
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.58 0.16

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 325.10 1,137.66
Average Latency (ms) 435.66 1,150.20
Maximum Latency (ms) 487.90 1,156.48
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 484.44 1,149.76

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB)
Transactions per second 5,392.00 10,458.00
Queries per second 53,920.00 104,580.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.37 0.9
Average Latency (ms) 1.85 0.96
Maximum Latency (ms) 3 2.72
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.35 1.03

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB)
Transactions per second 3,296.00 9,453.00
Queries per second 32,960.00 94,530.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.47 0.66
Average Latency (ms) 3.03 1.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 19.45 2.97
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.41 1.44

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB)
Transactions per second 1,930.00 4,003.00
Queries per second 19,300.00 40,030.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 3.41 1.86
Average Latency (ms) 5.18 2.5
Maximum Latency (ms) 26.77 10.15
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 6.55 3.19

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB)
Transactions per second 4,756.00 15,926.00
Queries per second 47,560.00 159,260.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.08 0.38
Average Latency (ms) 2.1 0.63
Maximum Latency (ms) 40.66 2.51
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.25 0.84

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB)
Transactions per second 1,434,092.00 1,958,342.00
Queries per second 14,340,920.00 19,583,420.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 418.16 247.36
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB)
Transactions per second 125,686.00 211,764.00
Queries per second 1,256,860.00 2,117,640.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.05 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.08 0.05
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.84 3.71
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.11 0.07

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB)
Transactions per second 7,055.00 10,600.00
Queries per second 70,550.00 106,000.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.33 0.3
Average Latency (ms) 1.42 0.94
Maximum Latency (ms) 7.12 2.98
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.07 1.23

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB)
Transactions per second 6,592.00 11,141.00
Queries per second 65,920.00 111,410.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.43 0.16
Average Latency (ms) 1.52 0.9
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.28 3.25
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.03 1.16

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB)
Transactions per second 5,138.00 15,677.00
Queries per second 51,380.00 156,770.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.07 0.39
Average Latency (ms) 1.94 0.64
Maximum Latency (ms) 39.78 10.64
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.81 0.92

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB)
Transactions per second 4,781.00 16,119.00
Queries per second 47,810.00 161,190.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.13 0.37
Average Latency (ms) 2.09 0.62
Maximum Latency (ms) 19.23 2.08
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.07 0.84

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB)
Transactions per second 41,513.00 143,360.00
Queries per second 415,130.00 1,433,600.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.05 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.24 0.07
Maximum Latency (ms) 11.7 2.7
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.67 0.1

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 62,073.25 54,764.51
PING_MBULK per Second 58,719.91 55,340.34
SET per Second 54,171.18 54,347.82
GET per Second 64,308.68 55,493.89
INCR per Second 55,648.30 54,975.26
LPUSH per Second 55,493.89 55,066.08
RPUSH per Second 52,938.06 54,054.05
LPOP per Second 62,539.09 54,318.30
RPOP per Second 66,269.05 54,975.26
SADD per Second 62,189.05 55,432.37
HSET per Second 55,157.20 54,854.64
SPOP per Second 54,674.69 55,493.89
ZADD per Second 55,035.77 54,406.96
ZPOPMIN per Second 55,035.77 53,390.28
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 37,355.25 36,218.76
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 21,715.53 19,864.92
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 16,084.93 13,570.36
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 14,990.26 12,000.48
MSET (10 keys) per Second 57,770.08 50,658.56

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB)
PING_INLINE0.420.59
PING_MBULK0.440.58
SET0.480.60
GET0.400.58
INCR0.470.59
LPUSH0.470.59
RPUSH0.490.60
LPOP0.420.60
RPOP0.390.60
SADD0.420.58
HSET0.470.59
SPOP0.470.58
ZADD0.480.60
ZPOPMIN0.470.61
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.780.94
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.261.75
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)1.712.61
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)1.912.96
MSET (10 keys)0.470.69

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The DigitalOcean Premium AMD instance demonstrates stronger overall performance across CPU, memory, and I/O benchmarks, providing higher rates of requests per second for various Redis operations, lower latencies, and more efficient file and memory operations compared to the Vultr Cloud Compute instance. While the Vultr instance performs adequately for simple tasks and has a lower monthly cost, it lags significantly in benchmarks involving more CPU-intensive and I/O-heavy workloads. Therefore, the DigitalOcean instance is better suited for demanding applications requiring high throughput and low latency, such as high-performance web services, large-scale databases, or complex compute tasks, whereas the Vultr instance would be more suitable for simpler applications or those with lower resource demands.

From the friendly human:

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