VPS Showdown VPS Showdown

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

vs.

Same showdown, different day. Today I spun up fresh 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). Let's get into the numbers.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Last Benchmarked Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:34:21 GMT Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:31:21 GMT
Linux Distro Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version 7.0.0-27-generic 7.0.0-27-generic
MySQL Version 8.4.10-0ubuntu0.26.04.1 8.4.10-0ubuntu0.26.04.1
Redis Version 8.0.5 8.0.5
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

Head-to-head

Category winners from the latest benchmarks.

CategoryWinner
CPU (events/sec)DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)
Memory (read MiB/s)DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Disk I/O (MiB/s)DigitalOcean – Regular (2 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 4 of 6 categories.

CPU

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Vendor GenuineIntel GenuineIntel
Model Name DO-Premium-Intel DO-Regular
Clock Speed (MHz) 1,995.31 2,494.14
CPU Cache Size (KB) 4,096.00 4,096.00
BogoMips 3,990.62 4,988.28
Events per Second 1,569.73 411.59
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.5 0.99
Average Latency (ms) 0.63 2.42
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.89 19.9
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.01 3.96

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Operations per second 3,257,050.99 4,123,717.02
Mebibytes per second 3,180.71 4,027.07
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.04 0.54
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Operations per second 3,792,553.48 4,007,053.05
Mebibytes per second 3,703.67 3,913.14
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.49 1.82
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Reads per Second 2,083.32 2,758.95
Writes per Second 1,388.85 1,839.23
Fsyncs per Second 4,445.91 5,895.77
Read Mebibytes per Second 32.55 43.11
Written Mebibytes per Second 21.70 28.74
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.13 0.09
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.6 11.81
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.43 0.3

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 3,034.96 2,498.24
Average Latency (ms) 3,055.67 2,546.75
Maximum Latency (ms) 3,070.73 2,562.19
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3,095.38 2,585.31

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Transactions per second 7,028.00 5,626.00
Queries per second 70,280.00 56,260.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.03 1.18
Average Latency (ms) 1.42 1.77
Maximum Latency (ms) 12.04 3.44
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2 2.39

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Transactions per second 4,496.00 4,813.00
Queries per second 44,960.00 48,130.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.09 0.92
Average Latency (ms) 2.22 2.07
Maximum Latency (ms) 31.7 29.26
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.13 3.19

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Transactions per second 2,100.00 1,931.00
Queries per second 21,000.00 19,310.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.57 2.94
Average Latency (ms) 4.76 5.17
Maximum Latency (ms) 25.06 17.66
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 6.79 7.17

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Transactions per second 6,996.00 6,585.00
Queries per second 69,960.00 65,850.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.64 0.56
Average Latency (ms) 1.42 1.51
Maximum Latency (ms) 47.81 11.88
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.48 2.71

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Transactions per second 964,103.00 833,039.00
Queries per second 9,641,030.00 8,330,390.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 564.3 568.39
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Transactions per second 194,738.00 148,439.00
Queries per second 1,947,380.00 1,484,390.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.05 0.07
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.75 4.95
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.08 0.1

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Transactions per second 3,978.00 3,505.00
Queries per second 39,780.00 35,050.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.71 0.98
Average Latency (ms) 2.51 2.85
Maximum Latency (ms) 7.86 6.79
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.18 4.25

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Transactions per second 6,387.00 5,769.00
Queries per second 63,870.00 57,690.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.54 0.53
Average Latency (ms) 1.56 1.73
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.51 4.73
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.61 2.66

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Transactions per second 4,587.00 6,299.00
Queries per second 45,870.00 62,990.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.73 0.57
Average Latency (ms) 2.18 1.58
Maximum Latency (ms) 49.21 28.52
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.49 3.07

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Transactions per second 7,624.00 7,198.00
Queries per second 76,240.00 71,980.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.6 0.51
Average Latency (ms) 1.31 1.39
Maximum Latency (ms) 27.61 167.69
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.18 2.35

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Transactions per second 71,987.00 33,426.00
Queries per second 719,870.00 334,260.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.14 0.3
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.22 22.19
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.83 1.61

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 50,581.69 34,188.04
PING_MBULK per Second 52,714.81 44,483.99
SET per Second 56,211.35 40,112.31
GET per Second 56,401.58 40,883.07
INCR per Second 59,101.65 39,729.84
LPUSH per Second 41,084.63 40,404.04
RPUSH per Second 41,186.16 37,397.16
LPOP per Second 42,643.92 37,257.82
RPOP per Second 44,642.86 36,114.12
SADD per Second 44,072.28 37,425.15
HSET per Second 46,663.56 38,759.69
SPOP per Second 47,505.94 45,641.26
ZADD per Second 41,407.87 42,283.30
ZPOPMIN per Second 34,459.00 47,438.33
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 29,446.41 23,089.36
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 13,106.16 12,169.89
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 10,968.52 8,394.19
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 8,992.00 6,932.89
MSET (10 keys) per Second 46,620.05 31,796.50

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
PING_INLINE0.630.94
PING_MBULK0.600.69
SET0.570.77
GET0.570.75
INCR0.550.78
LPUSH0.790.78
RPUSH0.780.84
LPOP0.770.85
RPOP0.730.87
SADD0.730.83
HSET0.690.81
SPOP0.670.68
ZADD0.780.74
ZPOPMIN0.910.65
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)1.141.40
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)2.482.63
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)3.003.62
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)3.514.24
MSET (10 keys)0.851.06

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The DigitalOcean Premium Intel (1 GB) instance outperforms the Regular (2 GB) counterpart in most benchmarks. The Premium Intel instance shows significantly higher Redis RPS in key operations like SET (56,211 vs. 40,112) and GET (56,402 vs. 40,883) with lower latencies. While the Regular instance provides more RAM, the superior CPU performance of the Premium Intel instance translates to better overall throughput, especially in CPU-intensive tasks and database operations, making it ideal for applications requiring high CPU efficiency and low latency.

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.

Related comparisons

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