DigitalOcean Premium Intel (1 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Regular (2 GB)
New day, new benchmarks. Today I've spun up brand new instance from DigitalOcean 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. Let's get into the numbers.
Overview
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) | DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Last Benchmarked | Sun, 10 May 2026 12:00:52 GMT | Tue, 12 May 2026 23:00:52 GMT |
| Linux Distro | Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 | Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 |
| Kernel Version | 6.8.0-71-generic | 6.8.0-71-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 | New York, NY |
| Monthly Price | $8.00 | $12.00 |
| RAM (GB) | 1 | 2 |
| CPU Cores | 1 | 1 |
| Storage (TB) | 35 | 50 |
| Storage Type | NVMe | SSD |
| Transfer (TB) | 1 | 2 |
CPU
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) | DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | GenuineIntel | GenuineIntel |
| Model Name | DO-Premium-Intel | DO-Regular |
| Clock Speed (MHz) | 2,100.00 | 2,294.61 |
| CPU Cache Size (KB) | 4,096.00 | 4,096.00 |
| BogoMips | 4,200.00 | 4,589.21 |
| Events per Second | 1,123.72 | 408.72 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.44 | 0.98 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.89 | 2.44 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 3.74 | 30.57 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 2.07 | 4.1 |
Memory
Memory Read
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) | DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Operations per second | 4,675,020.48 | 1,633,276.41 |
| Mebibytes per second | 4,565.45 | 1,595.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 0.2 | 3.35 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
Memory Write
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) | DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Operations per second | 4,732,484.18 | 1,592,941.48 |
| Mebibytes per second | 4,621.57 | 1,555.61 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 0.16 | 5.53 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
File I/O
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) | DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Reads per Second | 2,649.98 | 1,584.78 |
| Writes per Second | 1,766.65 | 1,056.52 |
| Fsyncs per Second | 5,662.79 | 3,385.97 |
| Read Mebibytes per Second | 41.41 | 24.76 |
| Written Mebibytes per Second | 27.60 | 16.51 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.1 | 0.16 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 5.52 | 20.31 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0.34 | 0.51 |
Mutex
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) | DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 2,214.49 | 2,434.32 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 2,221.55 | 2,473.55 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 2,227.60 | 2,489.41 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 2,238.47 | 2,493.86 |
MySQL
MySQL Read-only
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) | DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 8,882.00 | 4,752.00 |
| Queries per second | 88,820.00 | 47,520.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 1.01 | 1.23 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 1.12 | 2.1 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 3.83 | 5.76 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 1.61 | 2.66 |
MySQL Write-only
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) | DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 5,611.00 | 1,930.00 |
| Queries per second | 56,110.00 | 19,300.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.94 | 2.65 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 1.78 | 5.18 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 15.35 | 56.83 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 2.66 | 7.98 |
MySQL Read/Write
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) | DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 2,734.00 | 1,306.00 |
| Queries per second | 27,340.00 | 13,060.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 2.2 | 4.6 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 3.65 | 7.65 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 45.15 | 28.54 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 5.37 | 10.09 |
MySQL INSERT
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) | DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 9,168.00 | 3,148.00 |
| Queries per second | 91,680.00 | 31,480.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.56 | 1.72 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 1.09 | 3.17 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 17.78 | 32.67 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 1.73 | 4.41 |
MySQL Bulk INSERT
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) | DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 1,375,842.00 | 669,209.00 |
| Queries per second | 13,758,420.00 | 6,692,090.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.01 | 0.02 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 392.83 | 772.1 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
MySQL SELECT
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) | DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 254,408.00 | 136,020.00 |
| Queries per second | 2,544,080.00 | 1,360,200.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.03 | 0.04 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.04 | 0.07 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 1.24 | 3.33 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0.05 | 0.11 |
MySQL SELECT (Random Points)
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) | DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 6,839.00 | 3,617.00 |
| Queries per second | 68,390.00 | 36,170.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.48 | 0.82 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 1.46 | 2.76 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 4.84 | 12.27 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 1.93 | 3.82 |
MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) | DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 8,318.00 | 3,087.00 |
| Queries per second | 83,180.00 | 30,870.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.42 | 0.67 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 1.2 | 3.23 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 3.52 | 8.52 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 1.58 | 5.18 |
MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) | DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 9,033.00 | 2,586.00 |
| Queries per second | 90,330.00 | 25,860.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.55 | 1.8 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 1.11 | 3.86 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 10.79 | 45.13 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 1.76 | 6.21 |
MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) | DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 9,456.00 | 3,094.00 |
| Queries per second | 94,560.00 | 30,940.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.53 | 1.83 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 1.06 | 3.23 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 9.47 | 35.75 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 1.55 | 4.65 |
MySQL DELETE
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) | DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 123,722.00 | 19,562.00 |
| Queries per second | 1,237,220.00 | 195,620.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.03 | 0.04 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.08 | 0.51 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 15.71 | 32.94 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0.12 | 3.02 |
Redis
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) | DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| PING_INLINE per Second | 71,428.57 | 39,729.84 |
| PING_MBULK per Second | 73,583.52 | 42,176.30 |
| SET per Second | 71,326.68 | 40,833.00 |
| GET per Second | 73,421.44 | 34,590.11 |
| INCR per Second | 74,183.98 | 35,410.77 |
| LPUSH per Second | 72,463.77 | 39,184.95 |
| RPUSH per Second | 72,568.94 | 36,509.68 |
| LPOP per Second | 71,942.45 | 36,791.76 |
| RPOP per Second | 72,411.30 | 38,834.95 |
| SADD per Second | 72,992.70 | 35,727.05 |
| HSET per Second | 71,994.23 | 35,790.98 |
| SPOP per Second | 72,833.21 | 39,478.88 |
| ZADD per Second | 71,890.73 | 38,850.04 |
| ZPOPMIN per Second | 72,992.70 | 40,338.84 |
| LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second | 40,749.80 | 17,461.15 |
| LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second | 20,149.10 | 7,711.29 |
| LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second | 12,981.96 | 4,860.50 |
| LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second | 11,043.62 | 4,094.67 |
| MSET (10 keys) per Second | 63,331.22 | 32,041.01 |
Redis Average Latency (ms)
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) | DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| PING_INLINE | 0.46 | 0.83 |
| PING_MBULK | 0.44 | 0.78 |
| SET | 0.45 | 0.82 |
| GET | 0.44 | 0.94 |
| INCR | 0.44 | 0.93 |
| LPUSH | 0.45 | 0.85 |
| RPUSH | 0.45 | 0.91 |
| LPOP | 0.46 | 0.92 |
| RPOP | 0.46 | 0.87 |
| SADD | 0.45 | 0.92 |
| HSET | 0.45 | 0.93 |
| SPOP | 0.44 | 0.84 |
| ZADD | 0.46 | 0.86 |
| ZPOPMIN | 0.45 | 0.82 |
| LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) | 0.88 | 2.05 |
| LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) | 1.79 | 4.59 |
| LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) | 2.76 | 7.19 |
| LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) | 3.21 | 8.42 |
| MSET (10 keys) | 0.56 | 1.12 |
Conclusion
From the friendly robots:
When comparing the two DigitalOcean instances, the Premium Intel (1 GB) instance shows slightly higher performance in most benchmarks, particularly in Redis operations, where it consistently achieves higher requests per second (rps) and lower latencies, and in MySQL operations where it handles bulk inserts and read-only OLTP operations more efficiently. The Regular (2 GB) instance, on the other hand, has more RAM, which might be beneficial for larger workloads that require more memory, and performs slightly better in MySQL write operations and bulk insert tasks. The Premium Intel instance excels in CPU-intensive tasks and I/O operations, making it ideal for scenarios where low latency and high throughput are crucial. Meanwhile, the Regular instance might be better suited for memory-intensive applications or when budget constraints are a factor due to its lower monthly cost.
From the friendly human:
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