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

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My friend, I'm so glad you're here! Today I spun up fresh instances from DigitalOcean and Vultr to run some benchmarks on. All instances were spun up with 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) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Last Benchmarked Sat, 01 Aug 2026 05:06:47 GMT Sat, 01 Aug 2026 05:12:02 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 50
Storage Type NVMe NVMe
Transfer (TB) 1 3

Head-to-head

Category winners from the latest benchmarks.

CategoryWinner
CPU (events/sec)Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Memory (read MiB/s)Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Disk I/O (MiB/s)Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
MySQL (read/write tps)Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Redis (GET/sec)DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)
Value (CPU events per $/mo)Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)

Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB) takes 5 of 6 categories.

CPU

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Vendor GenuineIntel AuthenticAMD
Model Name DO-Premium-Intel AMD EPYC-Genoa Processor
Clock Speed (MHz) 2,100.00 2,900.00
CPU Cache Size (KB) 4,096.00 1,024.00
BogoMips 4,199.99 5,800.00
Events per Second 2,013.81 4,289.74
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.48 0.22
Average Latency (ms) 0.5 0.23
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.98 3.69
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.53 0.25

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Operations per second 4,187,334.90 7,477,695.15
Mebibytes per second 4,089.19 7,302.44
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.12 0.24
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Operations per second 4,366,312.99 7,480,195.03
Mebibytes per second 4,263.98 7,304.88
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.45 0.26
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Reads per Second 2,182.02 3,878.89
Writes per Second 1,454.68 2,585.89
Fsyncs per Second 4,663.66 8,276.45
Read Mebibytes per Second 34.09 60.61
Written Mebibytes per Second 22.73 40.40
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.12 0.07
Maximum Latency (ms) 19.91 2.04
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.42 0.19

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 2,139.85 1,267.92
Average Latency (ms) 2,170.02 1,275.63
Maximum Latency (ms) 2,181.39 1,281.79
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2,198.52 1,280.93

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 8,593.00 14,172.00
Queries per second 85,930.00 141,720.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.98 0.64
Average Latency (ms) 1.16 0.7
Maximum Latency (ms) 20.7 3.22
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.61 0.78

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 4,104.00 12,730.00
Queries per second 41,040.00 127,300.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.05 0.62
Average Latency (ms) 2.43 0.78
Maximum Latency (ms) 18.59 4.66
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.3 0.94

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 2,212.00 6,314.00
Queries per second 22,120.00 63,140.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.65 1.39
Average Latency (ms) 4.51 1.58
Maximum Latency (ms) 14.28 7.43
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 6.32 1.76

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 6,241.00 20,594.00
Queries per second 62,410.00 205,940.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.63 0.39
Average Latency (ms) 1.6 0.48
Maximum Latency (ms) 25.45 3.1
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.66 0.57

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 1,171,967.00 2,395,217.00
Queries per second 11,719,670.00 23,952,170.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 459.35 192.09
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 234,610.00 364,617.00
Queries per second 2,346,100.00 3,646,170.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.02
Average Latency (ms) 0.04 0.03
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.37 0.91
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.06 0.04

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 5,162.00 11,020.00
Queries per second 51,620.00 110,200.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.57 0.31
Average Latency (ms) 1.93 0.91
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.87 3.29
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.81 1.18

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 7,424.00 14,569.00
Queries per second 74,240.00 145,690.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.49 0.22
Average Latency (ms) 1.35 0.69
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.12 2.01
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.89 0.89

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 7,010.00 19,450.00
Queries per second 70,100.00 194,500.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.62 0.42
Average Latency (ms) 1.42 0.51
Maximum Latency (ms) 37.55 10.16
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.3 0.61

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 6,487.00 19,900.00
Queries per second 64,870.00 199,000.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.6 0.4
Average Latency (ms) 1.54 0.5
Maximum Latency (ms) 13.73 10.32
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.35 0.59

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 67,164.00 265,546.00
Queries per second 671,640.00 2,655,460.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.03 0.02
Average Latency (ms) 0.15 0.04
Maximum Latency (ms) 11.58 2.58
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.03 0.06

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 68,728.52 48,146.37
PING_MBULK per Second 69,060.77 47,460.84
SET per Second 64,350.06 49,140.05
GET per Second 58,788.95 48,332.53
INCR per Second 66,137.57 47,080.98
LPUSH per Second 65,487.89 48,449.61
RPUSH per Second 68,259.38 47,961.63
LPOP per Second 66,755.67 46,794.57
RPOP per Second 66,800.27 47,103.16
SADD per Second 66,313.00 47,984.64
HSET per Second 66,533.60 47,961.63
SPOP per Second 69,979.01 46,838.41
ZADD per Second 60,938.45 48,947.62
ZPOPMIN per Second 63,411.54 47,619.05
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 38,372.98 38,226.30
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 18,378.97 24,906.60
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 12,220.46 18,073.38
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 11,273.96 16,404.20
MSET (10 keys) per Second 50,000.00 48,262.55

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
PING_INLINE0.460.63
PING_MBULK0.460.63
SET0.500.63
GET0.540.62
INCR0.480.65
LPUSH0.490.64
RPUSH0.470.65
LPOP0.480.68
RPOP0.480.66
SADD0.480.64
HSET0.480.65
SPOP0.450.64
ZADD0.530.64
ZPOPMIN0.500.63
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.870.82
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.751.30
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)2.711.69
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)2.891.95
MSET (10 keys)0.800.69

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

Based on the benchmarks, the Vultr High Performance AMD instance clearly outperforms the DigitalOcean Premium Intel instance, especially in CPU-heavy tasks. While DigitalOcean's instance excels in Redis operations with high RPS rates like 68728.52 for PING_INLINE, Vultr's AMD EPYC-Genoa Processor outshines with an impressive 4289.74 events per second in CPU benchmarks and superior MySQL bulk insert performance with 238318.6 TPs. Therefore, for CPU-intensive or database-driven applications, the Vultr AMD instance is the better choice.

From the friendly human:

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