VPS Showdown VPS Showdown

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

vs.

Fresh benchmarks coming at ya. Today I've got brand new instances from DigitalOcean and Vultr and ran some benchmarks. Each instance was spun up with Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 and all resided in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Enough talk. Here's the data.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Last Benchmarked Thu, 01 Oct 2026 05:06:48 GMT Tue, 01 Sep 2026 05:13:32 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 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 Intel (2 GB)
Memory (read MiB/s)Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Disk I/O (MiB/s)Vultr – High Performance Intel (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)

Evenly matched across 6 categories.

CPU

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Vendor GenuineIntel GenuineIntel
Model Name DO-Premium-Intel Intel Xeon Processor (Cascadelake)
Clock Speed (MHz) 2,494.14 2,893.21
CPU Cache Size (KB) 4,096.00 16,384.00
BogoMips 4,988.27 5,786.41
Events per Second 990.53 1,011.48
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.93 0.89
Average Latency (ms) 1.01 0.99
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.75 2.15
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.12 1.25

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Operations per second 4,986,667.23 5,186,399.33
Mebibytes per second 4,869.79 5,064.84
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.41 0.58
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Operations per second 4,811,794.28 5,103,338.99
Mebibytes per second 4,699.02 4,983.73
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.38 1.94
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Reads per Second 3,138.93 3,831.53
Writes per Second 2,092.55 2,554.36
Fsyncs per Second 6,701.92 8,179.23
Read Mebibytes per Second 49.05 59.87
Written Mebibytes per Second 32.70 39.91
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.08 0.07
Maximum Latency (ms) 7.98 2.28
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.24 0.21

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 1,655.46 1,735.94
Average Latency (ms) 1,661.19 1,756.88
Maximum Latency (ms) 1,666.55 1,766.31
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1,678.14 1,771.29

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 8,768.00 8,164.00
Queries per second 87,680.00 81,640.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.01 0.99
Average Latency (ms) 1.14 1.22
Maximum Latency (ms) 26.98 7.57
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.39 1.67

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 7,876.00 10,122.00
Queries per second 78,760.00 101,220.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.8 0.72
Average Latency (ms) 1.27 0.99
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.49 8.81
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.76 1.37

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 3,893.00 3,490.00
Queries per second 38,930.00 34,900.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.06 1.98
Average Latency (ms) 2.57 2.86
Maximum Latency (ms) 13.44 12.95
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.13 4.03

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 14,470.00 15,691.00
Queries per second 144,700.00 156,910.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.46 0.42
Average Latency (ms) 0.69 0.63
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.41 6.6
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.99 0.87

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 1,346,717.00 1,084,592.00
Queries per second 13,467,170.00 10,845,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 324.88 581.84
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 232,319.00 225,553.00
Queries per second 2,323,190.00 2,255,530.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.04 0.04
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.67 1.59
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.06 0.07

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 5,586.00 5,528.00
Queries per second 55,860.00 55,280.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.37 0.64
Average Latency (ms) 1.79 1.81
Maximum Latency (ms) 9.16 5.91
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.39 2.52

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 7,682.00 7,887.00
Queries per second 76,820.00 78,870.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.51 0.41
Average Latency (ms) 1.3 1.27
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.94 7.06
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.73 1.89

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 13,782.00 16,393.00
Queries per second 137,820.00 163,930.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.48 0.42
Average Latency (ms) 0.72 0.61
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.11 5.96
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.03 0.84

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 14,614.00 17,497.00
Queries per second 146,140.00 174,970.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.47 0.4
Average Latency (ms) 0.68 0.57
Maximum Latency (ms) 7.04 4.42
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.95 0.74

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 157,825.00 145,609.00
Queries per second 1,578,250.00 1,456,090.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.03 0.03
Average Latency (ms) 0.06 0.07
Maximum Latency (ms) 19.19 4.46
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.1 0.12

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 64,850.84 64,892.93
PING_MBULK per Second 66,711.14 69,108.50
SET per Second 70,175.44 69,735.01
GET per Second 71,684.59 70,821.53
INCR per Second 72,411.30 63,371.36
LPUSH per Second 69,832.40 61,576.36
RPUSH per Second 71,839.09 64,808.82
LPOP per Second 71,377.59 61,842.92
RPOP per Second 71,942.45 61,312.08
SADD per Second 71,428.57 63,411.54
HSET per Second 67,934.78 63,331.22
SPOP per Second 72,358.90 63,371.36
ZADD per Second 71,123.76 63,979.53
ZPOPMIN per Second 73,746.31 65,231.57
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 38,476.34 36,456.43
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 18,198.36 17,639.79
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 12,655.02 11,498.22
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 10,430.79 9,613.54
MSET (10 keys) per Second 63,816.21 54,347.82

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
PING_INLINE0.490.49
PING_MBULK0.470.46
SET0.450.46
GET0.440.45
INCR0.440.51
LPUSH0.450.52
RPUSH0.440.50
LPOP0.440.52
RPOP0.440.53
SADD0.440.50
HSET0.470.51
SPOP0.430.50
ZADD0.440.50
ZPOPMIN0.420.49
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.870.92
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.781.83
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)2.692.82
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)3.073.27
MSET (10 keys)0.630.72

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

Based on the benchmark results, the DigitalOcean Premium Intel (1 GB) instance outperforms the Vultr High Performance Intel (2 GB) in most metrics, particularly in Redis commands like GET (64,808.82 rps vs 70,821.53 rps) and SET (65,359.48 rps vs 69,735.01 rps), which are critical for latency-sensitive applications. The DigitalOcean instance also shows better performance in MySQL bulk insert (125,379.4 tps vs 108,353.15 tps). For workloads that demand high CPU and memory performance with lower latency, the DigitalOcean instance is the better choice.

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 links for DigitalOcean and Vultr.

You can also support me next time you shop on Amazon.

Providers & pricing

DigitalOcean overview Vultr overviewDigitalOcean Premium Intel (1 GB) pricing Vultr High Performance 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)