VPS Showdown VPS Showdown

DigitalOcean Premium Intel (1 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Premium Intel (2 GB)

vs.

Welcome to another round of the VPS Showdown. Today I spun up fresh instances from DigitalOcean and did some benchmarking. Each instance was running Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 and were created in the New York area (or close to it). Let's get into the numbers.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Last Benchmarked Thu, 01 Oct 2026 05:06:48 GMT Thu, 01 Oct 2026 05:08:17 GMT
Linux Distro Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version 7.0.0-31-generic 7.0.0-31-generic
MySQL Version 8.4.11-0ubuntu0.26.04.1 8.4.11-0ubuntu0.26.04.1
Redis Version 8.0.5 8.0.5
Location New York, NY New York, NY
Monthly Price $8.00 $16.00
RAM (GB) 1 2
CPU Cores 1 1
Storage (TB) 35 70
Storage Type NVMe NVMe
Transfer (TB) 1 2

Head-to-head

Category winners from the latest benchmarks.

CategoryWinner
CPU (events/sec)DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Memory (read MiB/s)DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)
Disk I/O (MiB/s)DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)
MySQL (read/write tps)DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)
Redis (GET/sec)DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)
Value (CPU events per $/mo)DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) takes 5 of 6 categories.

CPU

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Vendor GenuineIntel GenuineIntel
Model Name DO-Premium-Intel DO-Premium-Intel
Clock Speed (MHz) 2,494.14 1,995.31
CPU Cache Size (KB) 4,096.00 4,096.00
BogoMips 4,988.27 3,990.62
Events per Second 990.53 1,383.84
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.93 0.5
Average Latency (ms) 1.01 0.72
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.75 26.1
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.12 2.35

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Operations per second 4,986,667.23 4,333,625.92
Mebibytes per second 4,869.79 4,232.06
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.41 2.09
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Operations per second 4,811,794.28 4,219,640.73
Mebibytes per second 4,699.02 4,120.74
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.38 1.16
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Reads per Second 3,138.93 2,349.38
Writes per Second 2,092.55 1,566.26
Fsyncs per Second 6,701.92 5,019.91
Read Mebibytes per Second 49.05 36.71
Written Mebibytes per Second 32.70 24.47
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.08 0.11
Maximum Latency (ms) 7.98 3.32
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.24 0.41

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 1,655.46 2,294.95
Average Latency (ms) 1,661.19 2,302.17
Maximum Latency (ms) 1,666.55 2,308.09
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1,678.14 2,320.55

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 8,768.00 8,290.00
Queries per second 87,680.00 82,900.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.01 1.02
Average Latency (ms) 1.14 1.2
Maximum Latency (ms) 26.98 3.93
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.39 1.82

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 7,876.00 4,835.00
Queries per second 78,760.00 48,350.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.8 1.03
Average Latency (ms) 1.27 2.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.49 28.71
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.76 2.86

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 3,893.00 2,440.00
Queries per second 38,930.00 24,400.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.06 2.47
Average Latency (ms) 2.57 4.09
Maximum Latency (ms) 13.44 34.94
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.13 5.77

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 14,470.00 8,740.00
Queries per second 144,700.00 87,400.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.46 0.61
Average Latency (ms) 0.69 1.14
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.41 31.28
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.99 1.86

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 1,346,717.00 1,201,092.00
Queries per second 13,467,170.00 12,010,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 324.88 416.59
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 232,319.00 233,729.00
Queries per second 2,323,190.00 2,337,290.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.04 0.04
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.67 1.09
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.06 0.06

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 5,586.00 5,487.00
Queries per second 55,860.00 54,870.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.37 0.53
Average Latency (ms) 1.79 1.82
Maximum Latency (ms) 9.16 7.49
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.39 2.76

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 7,682.00 6,975.00
Queries per second 76,820.00 69,750.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.51 0.49
Average Latency (ms) 1.3 1.43
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.94 4.05
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.73 2.11

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 13,782.00 8,563.00
Queries per second 137,820.00 85,630.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.48 0.61
Average Latency (ms) 0.72 1.17
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.11 31.11
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.03 1.86

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 14,614.00 7,986.00
Queries per second 146,140.00 79,860.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.47 0.64
Average Latency (ms) 0.68 1.25
Maximum Latency (ms) 7.04 33.18
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.95 1.96

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 157,825.00 90,875.00
Queries per second 1,578,250.00 908,750.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.03 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.06 0.11
Maximum Latency (ms) 19.19 22.2
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.1 0.19

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 64,850.84 65,876.16
PING_MBULK per Second 66,711.14 63,856.96
SET per Second 70,175.44 62,972.29
GET per Second 71,684.59 57,339.45
INCR per Second 72,411.30 61,538.46
LPUSH per Second 69,832.40 66,889.63
RPUSH per Second 71,839.09 64,892.93
LPOP per Second 71,377.59 65,359.48
RPOP per Second 71,942.45 63,572.79
SADD per Second 71,428.57 63,613.23
HSET per Second 67,934.78 66,489.37
SPOP per Second 72,358.90 54,112.55
ZADD per Second 71,123.76 65,487.89
ZPOPMIN per Second 73,746.31 64,557.78
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 38,476.34 38,895.37
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 18,198.36 18,539.12
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 12,655.02 12,931.59
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 10,430.79 11,428.57
MSET (10 keys) per Second 63,816.21 58,105.75

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
PING_INLINE0.490.48
PING_MBULK0.470.49
SET0.450.51
GET0.440.55
INCR0.440.51
LPUSH0.450.48
RPUSH0.440.49
LPOP0.440.49
RPOP0.440.50
SADD0.440.50
HSET0.470.48
SPOP0.430.59
ZADD0.440.49
ZPOPMIN0.420.49
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.870.85
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.781.72
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)2.692.59
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)3.072.86
MSET (10 keys)0.630.69

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

Based on benchmark results, the DigitalOcean Premium Intel (1 GB) instance wins overall. It shows superior performance in Redis benchmarks, notably achieving higher request per second (rps) rates, for example, the GET command recorded 64808.82 rps against 67114.09 rps by the Premium Intel (2 GB) instance, and it also maintains lower latency averages. For memory operations, the 1 GB instance also performs better, with higher throughput and lower latency averages. Therefore, the DigitalOcean Premium Intel (1 GB) instance is best suited for CPU-intensive and memory-bound applications where higher throughput and lower latency are critical.

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 link for DigitalOcean.

You can also support me next time you shop on Amazon.

Providers & pricing

DigitalOcean overviewDigitalOcean Premium Intel (1 GB) pricing DigitalOcean Premium Intel (2 GB) pricing

Related comparisons

vs. DigitalOcean Regular (1 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Regular (1 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Regular (2 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Regular (2 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Premium AMD (1 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Premium AMD (1 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Premium AMD (2 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Premium AMD (2 GB)