DigitalOcean Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) vs. Vultr High Performance Intel (1 GB)

vs.

My friend, I'm so glad you're here! Today I've spun up some brand new instance from DigitalOcean and Vultr and ran some benchmarks. All instances were running Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and were created in the New York area (or close to it). Time to see who showed up today.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Last Benchmarked Sun, 31 May 2026 20:00:52 GMT Sat, 30 May 2026 16:00:52 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 $6.00
RAM (GB) 8 1
CPU Cores 4 1
Storage (TB) 160 25
Storage Type NVMe NVMe
Transfer (TB) 5 2

CPU

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Vendor AuthenticAMD GenuineIntel
Model Name DO-Premium-AMD Intel Xeon Processor (Cascadelake)
Clock Speed (MHz) 1,996.25 2,893.17
CPU Cache Size (KB) 512.00 16,384.00
BogoMips 3,992.50 5,786.33
Events per Second 1,535.42 1,117.86
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.59 0.83
Average Latency (ms) 0.65 0.89
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.89 3.92
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.69 1.04

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Operations per second 4,867,578.39 4,957,996.46
Mebibytes per second 4,753.49 4,841.79
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.19 0.83
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Operations per second 4,347,879.44 4,994,957.56
Mebibytes per second 4,245.98 4,877.89
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.56 0.96
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Reads per Second 2,384.51 4,047.78
Writes per Second 1,589.67 2,698.52
Fsyncs per Second 5,095.64 8,646.86
Read Mebibytes per Second 37.26 63.25
Written Mebibytes per Second 24.84 42.16
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.11 0.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 9.42 3.35
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.58 0.19

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 325.10 1,571.60
Average Latency (ms) 435.66 1,588.95
Maximum Latency (ms) 487.90 1,599.96
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 484.44 1,589.90

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 5,392.00 8,137.00
Queries per second 53,920.00 81,370.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.37 1.08
Average Latency (ms) 1.85 1.23
Maximum Latency (ms) 3 6.86
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.35 1.42

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 3,296.00 7,462.00
Queries per second 32,960.00 74,620.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.47 0.77
Average Latency (ms) 3.03 1.34
Maximum Latency (ms) 19.45 5.26
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.41 1.93

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 1,930.00 3,070.00
Queries per second 19,300.00 30,700.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 3.41 2.45
Average Latency (ms) 5.18 3.25
Maximum Latency (ms) 26.77 8.6
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 6.55 4.18

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 4,756.00 15,069.00
Queries per second 47,560.00 150,690.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.08 0.43
Average Latency (ms) 2.1 0.66
Maximum Latency (ms) 40.66 3.39
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.25 0.87

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 1,434,092.00 964,103.00
Queries per second 14,340,920.00 9,641,030.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 418.16 458.6
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 125,686.00 213,306.00
Queries per second 1,256,860.00 2,133,060.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.05 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.08 0.05
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.84 4.3
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.11 0.07

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 7,055.00 5,672.00
Queries per second 70,550.00 56,720.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.33 0.58
Average Latency (ms) 1.42 1.76
Maximum Latency (ms) 7.12 8.16
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.07 2.52

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 6,592.00 7,910.00
Queries per second 65,920.00 79,100.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.43 0.43
Average Latency (ms) 1.52 1.26
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.28 3.43
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.03 1.67

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 5,138.00 13,874.00
Queries per second 51,380.00 138,740.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.07 0.43
Average Latency (ms) 1.94 0.72
Maximum Latency (ms) 39.78 10.49
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.81 1.08

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 4,781.00 15,344.00
Queries per second 47,810.00 153,440.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.13 0.42
Average Latency (ms) 2.09 0.65
Maximum Latency (ms) 19.23 4.43
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.07 0.86

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 41,513.00 83,214.00
Queries per second 415,130.00 832,140.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.05 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.24 0.12
Maximum Latency (ms) 11.7 4.88
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.67 0.31

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 62,073.25 45,998.16
PING_MBULK per Second 58,719.91 46,210.72
SET per Second 54,171.18 48,756.70
GET per Second 64,308.68 47,014.57
INCR per Second 55,648.30 46,707.14
LPUSH per Second 55,493.89 46,296.29
RPUSH per Second 52,938.06 45,248.87
LPOP per Second 62,539.09 47,551.12
RPOP per Second 66,269.05 47,573.74
SADD per Second 62,189.05 46,794.57
HSET per Second 55,157.20 42,662.11
SPOP per Second 54,674.69 46,794.57
ZADD per Second 55,035.77 45,433.89
ZPOPMIN per Second 55,035.77 46,296.29
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 37,355.25 24,260.07
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 21,715.53 14,120.31
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 16,084.93 9,612.61
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 14,990.26 8,560.91
MSET (10 keys) per Second 57,770.08 43,859.65

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
PING_INLINE0.420.71
PING_MBULK0.440.70
SET0.480.68
GET0.400.70
INCR0.470.71
LPUSH0.470.72
RPUSH0.490.73
LPOP0.420.70
RPOP0.390.70
SADD0.420.70
HSET0.470.76
SPOP0.470.70
ZADD0.480.72
ZPOPMIN0.470.70
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.781.42
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.262.51
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)1.713.69
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)1.914.14
MSET (10 keys)0.470.78

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

Upon comparing the benchmark performance of the two instances, the DigitalOcean Premium AMD instance with 4 cores and 8 GB of RAM exhibits generally better performance across the board, particularly in handling Redis operations and CPU-intensive tasks, where it shows higher request per second rates and lower latency in most benchmarks. The Vultr High Performance Intel instance with a single core and 1 GB of RAM performs competitively in specific benchmarks, particularly excelling in raw Redis operations despite its lower core and memory configuration. However, it lags behind in CPU, file I/O, and memory operations, likely due to its fewer resources. The DigitalOcean instance is ideal for CPU-intensive workloads and environments that require higher memory and multi-core processing, whereas the Vultr instance might be more suitable for simpler, less resource-intensive applications that still need to handle high throughput Redis operations.

From the friendly human:

If you found this VPS Showdown helpful in your search for a hosting provider, please consider supporting my efforts by signing up using my referral links for DigitalOcean and Vultr.

You can also support me directly by buying me a coffee.