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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 did some benchmarking. All instances were spun up with Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 and were created in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Without further ado, here's the results.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Last Benchmarked Thu, 01 Oct 2026 05:06:48 GMT Tue, 01 Sep 2026 05:09:02 GMT
Linux Distro Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version 7.0.0-31-generic 7.0.0-29-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 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)Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 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)DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 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) 2,494.14 3,792.05
CPU Cache Size (KB) 4,096.00 16,384.00
BogoMips 4,988.27 7,584.10
Events per Second 990.53 1,433.50
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.93 0.67
Average Latency (ms) 1.01 0.7
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.75 3.42
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.12 0.73

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Operations per second 4,986,667.23 6,381,196.95
Mebibytes per second 4,869.79 6,231.64
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.41 0.38
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Operations per second 4,811,794.28 7,590,256.83
Mebibytes per second 4,699.02 7,412.36
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.38 0.75
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Reads per Second 3,138.93 4,797.61
Writes per Second 2,092.55 3,198.41
Fsyncs per Second 6,701.92 10,240.61
Read Mebibytes per Second 49.05 74.96
Written Mebibytes per Second 32.70 49.98
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.08 0.05
Maximum Latency (ms) 7.98 19.53
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.24 0.15

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 1,655.46 1,120.95
Average Latency (ms) 1,661.19 1,127.36
Maximum Latency (ms) 1,666.55 1,132.28
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1,678.14 1,129.24

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 8,768.00 10,238.00
Queries per second 87,680.00 102,380.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.01 0.9
Average Latency (ms) 1.14 0.98
Maximum Latency (ms) 26.98 2.33
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.39 1.06

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 7,876.00 12,564.00
Queries per second 78,760.00 125,640.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.8 0.65
Average Latency (ms) 1.27 0.79
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.49 8.86
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.76 0.97

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 3,893.00 5,279.00
Queries per second 38,930.00 52,790.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.06 1.64
Average Latency (ms) 2.57 1.89
Maximum Latency (ms) 13.44 4.39
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.13 2.22

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 14,470.00 22,126.00
Queries per second 144,700.00 221,260.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.46 0.37
Average Latency (ms) 0.69 0.45
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.41 2.84
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.99 0.53

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 1,346,717.00 1,958,342.00
Queries per second 13,467,170.00 19,583,420.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 324.88 207.7
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 232,319.00 216,335.00
Queries per second 2,323,190.00 2,163,350.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.04 0.05
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.67 1.11
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.06 0.06

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 5,586.00 8,316.00
Queries per second 55,860.00 83,160.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.37 0.4
Average Latency (ms) 1.79 1.2
Maximum Latency (ms) 9.16 3.62
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.39 1.55

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 7,682.00 11,393.00
Queries per second 76,820.00 113,930.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.51 0.24
Average Latency (ms) 1.3 0.88
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.94 2.81
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.73 1.12

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 13,782.00 20,610.00
Queries per second 137,820.00 206,100.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.48 0.36
Average Latency (ms) 0.72 0.48
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.11 4.53
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.03 0.65

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 14,614.00 22,150.00
Queries per second 146,140.00 221,500.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.47 0.37
Average Latency (ms) 0.68 0.45
Maximum Latency (ms) 7.04 9.44
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.95 0.54

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 157,825.00 162,113.00
Queries per second 1,578,250.00 1,621,130.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.03 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.06 0.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 19.19 4.22
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.1 0.09

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 64,850.84 50,327.12
PING_MBULK per Second 66,711.14 52,002.08
SET per Second 70,175.44 52,966.10
GET per Second 71,684.59 53,022.27
INCR per Second 72,411.30 53,219.80
LPUSH per Second 69,832.40 52,273.91
RPUSH per Second 71,839.09 52,056.22
LPOP per Second 71,377.59 51,679.59
RPOP per Second 71,942.45 50,890.59
SADD per Second 71,428.57 49,603.17
HSET per Second 67,934.78 51,466.80
SPOP per Second 72,358.90 53,134.96
ZADD per Second 71,123.76 51,948.05
ZPOPMIN per Second 73,746.31 52,742.62
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 38,476.34 36,832.41
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 18,198.36 22,041.00
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 12,655.02 15,622.56
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 10,430.79 13,980.15
MSET (10 keys) per Second 63,816.21 50,025.02

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
PING_INLINE0.490.61
PING_MBULK0.470.58
SET0.450.59
GET0.440.58
INCR0.440.59
LPUSH0.450.60
RPUSH0.440.60
LPOP0.440.60
RPOP0.440.61
SADD0.440.62
HSET0.470.60
SPOP0.430.58
ZADD0.440.60
ZPOPMIN0.420.59
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.870.85
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.781.48
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)2.692.02
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)3.072.37
MSET (10 keys)0.630.66

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The DigitalOcean Premium Intel (1 GB) instance clearly outperforms the Vultr High Frequency Intel (2 GB) in most benchmarks. The DigitalOcean instance consistently registers higher requests per second (rps) across Redis operations, such as LPUSH (68823.12 rps vs 52273.91 rps) and GET (64808.82 rps vs 53022.27 rps). It also excels in CPU-bound operations with superior thread fairness and lower latency in CPU events per second (2019.87 events/second vs 1433.5). Opt for the DigitalOcean instance for CPU-heavy applications requiring minimal RAM.

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

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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)