VPS Showdown VPS Showdown

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

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New day, new benchmarks. Today I've got brand new instances from DigitalOcean and ran my world famous suite of benchmarking scripts. Each instance was running Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 and were created in the New York area (or close to it). Enough talk. Here's the data.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)
Last Benchmarked Thu, 01 Oct 2026 05:00:49 GMT Thu, 01 Oct 2026 05:06:48 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 $6.00 $8.00
RAM (GB) 1 1
CPU Cores 1 1
Storage (TB) 25 35
Storage Type SSD NVMe
Transfer (TB) 1 1

Head-to-head

Category winners from the latest benchmarks.

CategoryWinner
CPU (events/sec)DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 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 6 of 6 categories.

CPU

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)
Vendor GenuineIntel GenuineIntel
Model Name DO-Regular DO-Premium-Intel
Clock Speed (MHz) 2,494.14 2,494.14
CPU Cache Size (KB) 4,096.00 4,096.00
BogoMips 4,988.27 4,988.27
Events per Second 705.37 990.53
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.98 0.93
Average Latency (ms) 1.41 1.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 12.76 1.75
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2 1.12

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)
Operations per second 3,663,208.77 4,986,667.23
Mebibytes per second 3,577.35 4,869.79
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.47 0.41
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)
Operations per second 3,890,887.47 4,811,794.28
Mebibytes per second 3,799.69 4,699.02
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.33 2.38
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)
Reads per Second 2,194.30 3,138.93
Writes per Second 1,462.87 2,092.55
Fsyncs per Second 4,688.57 6,701.92
Read Mebibytes per Second 34.29 49.05
Written Mebibytes per Second 22.86 32.70
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.12 0.08
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.7 7.98
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.32 0.24

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 2,352.19 1,655.46
Average Latency (ms) 2,382.76 1,661.19
Maximum Latency (ms) 2,393.79 1,666.55
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2,405.65 1,678.14

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 4,593.00 8,768.00
Queries per second 45,930.00 87,680.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.29 1.01
Average Latency (ms) 2.17 1.14
Maximum Latency (ms) 13.82 26.98
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.02 1.39

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 3,486.00 7,876.00
Queries per second 34,860.00 78,760.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.26 0.8
Average Latency (ms) 2.86 1.27
Maximum Latency (ms) 33.41 10.49
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.33 1.76

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 1,761.00 3,893.00
Queries per second 17,610.00 38,930.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 3.36 2.06
Average Latency (ms) 5.67 2.57
Maximum Latency (ms) 16.69 13.44
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 7.98 3.13

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 6,877.00 14,470.00
Queries per second 68,770.00 144,700.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.65 0.46
Average Latency (ms) 1.45 0.69
Maximum Latency (ms) 9.48 10.41
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.35 0.99

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 833,039.00 1,346,717.00
Queries per second 8,330,390.00 13,467,170.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 670.02 324.88
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 122,209.00 232,319.00
Queries per second 1,222,090.00 2,323,190.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.08 0.04
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.73 3.67
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.14 0.06

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 3,294.00 5,586.00
Queries per second 32,940.00 55,860.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.13 0.37
Average Latency (ms) 3.03 1.79
Maximum Latency (ms) 17.77 9.16
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.65 2.39

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 5,143.00 7,682.00
Queries per second 51,430.00 76,820.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.52 0.51
Average Latency (ms) 1.94 1.3
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.8 3.94
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.02 1.73

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 5,821.00 13,782.00
Queries per second 58,210.00 137,820.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.62 0.48
Average Latency (ms) 1.71 0.72
Maximum Latency (ms) 21.71 10.11
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.3 1.03

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 7,391.00 14,614.00
Queries per second 73,910.00 146,140.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.57 0.47
Average Latency (ms) 1.35 0.68
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.09 7.04
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.14 0.95

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 51,002.00 157,825.00
Queries per second 510,020.00 1,578,250.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.03
Average Latency (ms) 0.19 0.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 9.61 19.19
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.12 0.1

Redis

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 31,026.99 64,850.84
PING_MBULK per Second 34,530.39 66,711.14
SET per Second 35,945.36 70,175.44
GET per Second 34,293.55 71,684.59
INCR per Second 23,820.87 72,411.30
LPUSH per Second 30,931.02 69,832.40
RPUSH per Second 33,014.20 71,839.09
LPOP per Second 30,553.01 71,377.59
RPOP per Second 34,459.00 71,942.45
SADD per Second 37,285.61 71,428.57
HSET per Second 29,002.32 67,934.78
SPOP per Second 32,195.75 72,358.90
ZADD per Second 30,562.35 71,123.76
ZPOPMIN per Second 29,342.72 73,746.31
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 20,024.03 38,476.34
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 11,069.29 18,198.36
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 6,976.42 12,655.02
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 6,141.75 10,430.79
MSET (10 keys) per Second 27,609.06 63,816.21

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)
PING_INLINE0.990.49
PING_MBULK0.880.47
SET0.860.45
GET0.900.44
INCR1.330.44
LPUSH1.000.45
RPUSH0.940.44
LPOP1.030.44
RPOP0.910.44
SADD0.830.44
HSET1.070.47
SPOP0.950.43
ZADD1.010.44
ZPOPMIN1.060.42
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)1.620.87
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)2.901.78
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)4.302.69
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)4.793.07
MSET (10 keys)1.250.63

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The DigitalOcean Premium Intel (1 GB) instance outperforms the Regular (1 GB) in most benchmarks, notably with significantly higher RPS rates in Redis operations, such as LPUSH reaching 68823.12 RPS compared to 33590.86 RPS, and much better MySQL bulk insert TPS at 125379.4 compared to 73728.04. For use cases that demand high throughput and low latency, like caching or high-performance databases, the Premium Intel is clearly superior. However, the price difference is notable, so budget-conscious users may opt for the Regular (1 GB) if the performance gap is acceptable for their needs.

From the friendly human:

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Providers & pricing

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

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