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DigitalOcean Premium Intel (1 GB) vs. Vultr High Frequency Intel (2 GB)

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Fresh benchmarks coming at ya. Today I spun up fresh instances from DigitalOcean and Vultr and ran some benchmarks. Each instance was spun up with Ubuntu 26.04 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) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Last Benchmarked Sat, 01 Aug 2026 05:06:47 GMT Sat, 01 Aug 2026 05:09:02 GMT
Linux Distro Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version 7.0.0-27-generic 7.0.0-28-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 Newark, NJ
Monthly Price $8.00 $12.00
RAM (GB) 1 2
CPU Cores 1 1
Storage (TB) 35 64
Storage Type NVMe NVMe
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)Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Disk I/O (MiB/s)Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
MySQL (read/write tps)Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Redis (GET/sec)Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Value (CPU events per $/mo)DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)

Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB) takes 4 of 6 categories.

CPU

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Vendor GenuineIntel GenuineIntel
Model Name DO-Premium-Intel Intel Core Processor (Skylake, IBRS, no TSX)
Clock Speed (MHz) 2,100.00 3,696.00
CPU Cache Size (KB) 4,096.00 16,384.00
BogoMips 4,199.99 7,391.99
Events per Second 2,013.81 1,429.28
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.48 0.67
Average Latency (ms) 0.5 0.7
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.98 3.93
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.53 0.8

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Operations per second 4,187,334.90 7,573,259.47
Mebibytes per second 4,089.19 7,395.76
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.12 0.29
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Operations per second 4,366,312.99 7,520,809.77
Mebibytes per second 4,263.98 7,344.54
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.45 0.33
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Reads per Second 2,182.02 4,743.82
Writes per Second 1,454.68 3,162.54
Fsyncs per Second 4,663.66 10,128.84
Read Mebibytes per Second 34.09 74.12
Written Mebibytes per Second 22.73 49.41
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.12 0.05
Maximum Latency (ms) 19.91 2.43
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.42 0.16

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 2,139.85 1,135.02
Average Latency (ms) 2,170.02 1,145.46
Maximum Latency (ms) 2,181.39 1,150.95
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2,198.52 1,149.76

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 8,593.00 10,014.00
Queries per second 85,930.00 100,140.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.98 0.91
Average Latency (ms) 1.16 1
Maximum Latency (ms) 20.7 2.96
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.61 1.14

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 4,104.00 11,181.00
Queries per second 41,040.00 111,810.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.05 0.58
Average Latency (ms) 2.43 0.89
Maximum Latency (ms) 18.59 7.24
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.3 1.16

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 2,212.00 4,056.00
Queries per second 22,120.00 40,560.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.65 1.7
Average Latency (ms) 4.51 2.46
Maximum Latency (ms) 14.28 19.4
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 6.32 3.82

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 6,241.00 20,663.00
Queries per second 62,410.00 206,630.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.63 0.32
Average Latency (ms) 1.6 0.48
Maximum Latency (ms) 25.45 5.62
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.66 0.64

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 1,171,967.00 1,870,967.00
Queries per second 11,719,670.00 18,709,670.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 459.35 227.33
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 234,610.00 229,513.00
Queries per second 2,346,100.00 2,295,130.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.04 0.04
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.37 1.03
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.06 0.05

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 5,162.00 7,697.00
Queries per second 51,620.00 76,970.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.57 0.42
Average Latency (ms) 1.93 1.3
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.87 4.34
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.81 1.67

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 7,424.00 10,600.00
Queries per second 74,240.00 106,000.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.49 0.37
Average Latency (ms) 1.35 0.94
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.12 2.67
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.89 1.25

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 7,010.00 19,067.00
Queries per second 70,100.00 190,670.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.62 0.32
Average Latency (ms) 1.42 0.52
Maximum Latency (ms) 37.55 3.86
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.3 0.73

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 6,487.00 20,161.00
Queries per second 64,870.00 201,610.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.6 0.32
Average Latency (ms) 1.54 0.5
Maximum Latency (ms) 13.73 11.21
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.35 0.67

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 67,164.00 155,087.00
Queries per second 671,640.00 1,550,870.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.03 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.15 0.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 11.58 3.89
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.03 0.09

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 68,728.52 57,937.43
PING_MBULK per Second 69,060.77 57,670.13
SET per Second 64,350.06 60,096.15
GET per Second 58,788.95 60,938.45
INCR per Second 66,137.57 58,105.75
LPUSH per Second 65,487.89 59,453.03
RPUSH per Second 68,259.38 60,827.25
LPOP per Second 66,755.67 60,864.27
RPOP per Second 66,800.27 61,312.08
SADD per Second 66,313.00 59,066.75
HSET per Second 66,533.60 59,066.75
SPOP per Second 69,979.01 59,276.82
ZADD per Second 60,938.45 58,105.75
ZPOPMIN per Second 63,411.54 59,594.76
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 38,372.98 38,986.36
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 18,378.97 22,753.13
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 12,220.46 15,583.61
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 11,273.96 14,130.28
MSET (10 keys) per Second 50,000.00 54,674.69

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
PING_INLINE0.460.52
PING_MBULK0.460.51
SET0.500.51
GET0.540.49
INCR0.480.51
LPUSH0.490.51
RPUSH0.470.50
LPOP0.480.51
RPOP0.480.50
SADD0.480.51
HSET0.480.51
SPOP0.450.50
ZADD0.530.52
ZPOPMIN0.500.50
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.870.81
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.751.44
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)2.712.06
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)2.892.35
MSET (10 keys)0.800.59

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The DigitalOcean Premium Intel (1 GB) instance clearly outperforms the Vultr High Frequency Intel (2 GB) in Redis benchmark metrics, with higher requests per second and lower latency, as shown in commands like GET (58789 vs. 60938 rps) and SET (64350 vs. 60096 rps). The superior performance in CPU-intensive tasks and lower overall latency makes it more suitable for CPU-heavy applications, whereas the Vultr instance, despite having more RAM, is better for budget-conscious users needing high throughput for I/O-heavy operations.

From the friendly human:

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Providers & pricing

DigitalOcean overview Vultr overviewDigitalOcean Premium Intel (1 GB) pricing Vultr High Frequency 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 Intel (2 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Premium AMD (1 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Premium Intel (2 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Premium AMD (2 GB)