DigitalOcean Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) vs. Vultr High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)

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Same showdown, different day. Today I've spun up brand new instance from DigitalOcean and Vultr to run some benchmarks on. Each instance was running Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and were created in the New York area (or close to it). Without further ado, here's the results.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Last Benchmarked Sun, 31 May 2026 20:00:52 GMT Mon, 01 Jun 2026 11:00:52 GMT
Linux Distro Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version 6.8.0-71-generic 6.8.0-117-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 $24.00
RAM (GB) 8 4
CPU Cores 4 2
Storage (TB) 160 100
Storage Type NVMe NVMe
Transfer (TB) 5 5

CPU

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Vendor AuthenticAMD AuthenticAMD
Model Name DO-Premium-AMD AMD EPYC-Genoa Processor
Clock Speed (MHz) 1,996.25 2,900.00
CPU Cache Size (KB) 512.00 1,024.00
BogoMips 3,992.50 5,800.00
Events per Second 1,535.42 4,640.69
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.59 0.2
Average Latency (ms) 0.65 0.22
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.89 2.06
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.69 0.22

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Operations per second 4,867,578.39 7,477,512.86
Mebibytes per second 4,753.49 7,302.26
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.19 1.14
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Operations per second 4,347,879.44 7,470,053.68
Mebibytes per second 4,245.98 7,294.97
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.56 0.58
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Reads per Second 2,384.51 7,520.15
Writes per Second 1,589.67 5,013.44
Fsyncs per Second 5,095.64 16,053.19
Read Mebibytes per Second 37.26 117.50
Written Mebibytes per Second 24.84 78.33
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.11 0.03
Maximum Latency (ms) 9.42 2.8
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.58 0.11

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Minimum Latency (ms) 325.10 636.97
Average Latency (ms) 435.66 656.50
Maximum Latency (ms) 487.90 673.16
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 484.44 669.89

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 5,392.00 9,956.00
Queries per second 53,920.00 99,560.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.37 0.72
Average Latency (ms) 1.85 1
Maximum Latency (ms) 3 3.1
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.35 1.1

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 3,296.00 9,961.00
Queries per second 32,960.00 99,610.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.47 0.68
Average Latency (ms) 3.03 1
Maximum Latency (ms) 19.45 11.2
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.41 1.3

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 1,930.00 4,604.00
Queries per second 19,300.00 46,040.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 3.41 1.75
Average Latency (ms) 5.18 2.17
Maximum Latency (ms) 26.77 5.22
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 6.55 2.57

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 4,756.00 15,661.00
Queries per second 47,560.00 156,610.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.08 0.44
Average Latency (ms) 2.1 0.64
Maximum Latency (ms) 40.66 12.49
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.25 0.78

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 1,434,092.00 2,948,592.00
Queries per second 14,340,920.00 29,485,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 418.16 209.33
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 125,686.00 219,418.00
Queries per second 1,256,860.00 2,194,180.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.05 0.02
Average Latency (ms) 0.08 0.05
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.84 3.83
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.11 0.06

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 7,055.00 14,794.00
Queries per second 70,550.00 147,940.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.33 0.25
Average Latency (ms) 1.42 0.68
Maximum Latency (ms) 7.12 6.34
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.07 0.87

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 6,592.00 14,380.00
Queries per second 65,920.00 143,800.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.43 0.25
Average Latency (ms) 1.52 0.69
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.28 1.69
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.03 0.9

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 5,138.00 14,781.00
Queries per second 51,380.00 147,810.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.07 0.45
Average Latency (ms) 1.94 0.68
Maximum Latency (ms) 39.78 2.23
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.81 0.9

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 4,781.00 15,048.00
Queries per second 47,810.00 150,480.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.13 0.46
Average Latency (ms) 2.09 0.66
Maximum Latency (ms) 19.23 3.7
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.07 0.84

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 41,513.00 156,902.00
Queries per second 415,130.00 1,569,020.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.05 0.02
Average Latency (ms) 0.24 0.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 11.7 7.04
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.67 0.08

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
PING_INLINE per Second 62,073.25 61,500.61
PING_MBULK per Second 58,719.91 57,770.08
SET per Second 54,171.18 57,803.47
GET per Second 64,308.68 58,275.06
INCR per Second 55,648.30 58,343.06
LPUSH per Second 55,493.89 57,803.47
RPUSH per Second 52,938.06 58,275.06
LPOP per Second 62,539.09 58,377.11
RPOP per Second 66,269.05 58,275.06
SADD per Second 62,189.05 57,903.88
HSET per Second 55,157.20 57,670.13
SPOP per Second 54,674.69 57,273.77
ZADD per Second 55,035.77 58,719.91
ZPOPMIN per Second 55,035.77 57,504.31
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 37,355.25 50,000.00
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 21,715.53 33,489.62
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 16,084.93 26,130.13
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 14,990.26 24,467.83
MSET (10 keys) per Second 57,770.08 57,240.98

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
PING_INLINE0.420.43
PING_MBULK0.440.45
SET0.480.45
GET0.400.44
INCR0.470.44
LPUSH0.470.45
RPUSH0.490.44
LPOP0.420.44
RPOP0.390.44
SADD0.420.45
HSET0.470.45
SPOP0.470.45
ZADD0.480.44
ZPOPMIN0.470.45
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.780.52
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.260.77
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)1.710.99
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)1.911.04
MSET (10 keys)0.470.45

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

Both the DigitalOcean Premium AMD instance and the Vultr High Performance AMD instance demonstrate strong performance, but they excel in different areas. DigitalOcean's 4-core setup with 8GB of RAM offers robust throughput and low latency for Redis operations, making it ideal for CPU-intensive and memory-heavy workloads. Vultr's 2-core instance, while having a slightly higher clock speed, lags slightly behind in most metrics but stands out in CPU operations and thread fairness, making it a solid choice for applications that prioritize low latency and high throughput for file I/O and general compute tasks. The choice between the two largely depends on whether the user needs more cores and memory (DigitalOcean) or a higher clock speed with efficient threading (Vultr).

From the friendly human:

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