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

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My friend, I'm so glad you're here! Today I've spun up some brand new instance from DigitalOcean and Vultr and ran my world famous suite of benchmarking scripts. All instances were spun up with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and were created in the New York area (or close to it). Time to see who showed up today.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Last Benchmarked Sat, 30 May 2026 19:00:52 GMT Sun, 31 May 2026 13:00:55 GMT
Linux Distro Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version 6.8.0-71-generic 6.8.0-117-generic
MySQL Version 8.0.45-0ubuntu0.24.04.1 8.0.45-0ubuntu0.24.04.1
Redis Version 7.0.15 7.0.15
Location New York, NY Newark, NJ
Monthly Price $24.00 $18.00
RAM (GB) 2 2
CPU Cores 2 2
Storage (TB) 90 80
Storage Type NVMe NVMe
Transfer (TB) 3 3

CPU

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Vendor GenuineIntel GenuineIntel
Model Name DO-Premium-Intel Intel Core Processor (Skylake, IBRS, no TSX)
Clock Speed (MHz) 2,494.14 3,791.98
CPU Cache Size (KB) 4,096.00 16,384.00
BogoMips 4,988.28 7,583.95
Events per Second 963.13 1,552.05
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.91 0.62
Average Latency (ms) 1.04 0.64
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.44 4.61
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.25 0.69

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Operations per second 3,902,195.50 7,875,668.83
Mebibytes per second 3,810.74 7,691.08
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.26 0.12
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Operations per second 4,569,743.82 7,729,812.11
Mebibytes per second 4,462.64 7,548.64
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.15 0.16
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Reads per Second 2,742.35 4,671.85
Writes per Second 1,828.23 3,114.56
Fsyncs per Second 5,857.37 9,976.90
Read Mebibytes per Second 42.85 73.00
Written Mebibytes per Second 28.57 48.67
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.1 0.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 9.7 2.76
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.27 0.17

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Minimum Latency (ms) 916.48 543.27
Average Latency (ms) 1,020.85 554.74
Maximum Latency (ms) 1,118.20 563.70
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1,109.09 559.50

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 6,193.00 10,621.00
Queries per second 61,930.00 106,210.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.19 0.86
Average Latency (ms) 1.61 0.94
Maximum Latency (ms) 11.58 2.5
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.22 1.03

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 5,552.00 10,229.00
Queries per second 55,520.00 102,290.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.9 0.64
Average Latency (ms) 1.8 0.98
Maximum Latency (ms) 11.37 2.08
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.52 1.23

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 2,616.00 5,072.00
Queries per second 26,160.00 50,720.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.57 1.59
Average Latency (ms) 3.82 1.97
Maximum Latency (ms) 9.45 3.94
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5 2.39

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 8,253.00 16,038.00
Queries per second 82,530.00 160,380.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.54 0.38
Average Latency (ms) 1.21 0.62
Maximum Latency (ms) 15.31 13.18
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.76 0.8

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 1,346,717.00 2,424,342.00
Queries per second 13,467,170.00 24,243,420.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 383.36 205.81
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 167,795.00 241,313.00
Queries per second 1,677,950.00 2,413,130.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.03
Average Latency (ms) 0.06 0.04
Maximum Latency (ms) 13.06 0.76
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.09 0.05

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 5,976.00 12,080.00
Queries per second 59,760.00 120,800.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.56 0.21
Average Latency (ms) 1.67 0.83
Maximum Latency (ms) 6.01 3.31
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.52 1.04

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 6,014.00 10,527.00
Queries per second 60,140.00 105,270.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.67 0.16
Average Latency (ms) 1.66 0.95
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.75 3.25
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.76 1.23

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 8,636.00 17,123.00
Queries per second 86,360.00 171,230.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.53 0.38
Average Latency (ms) 1.16 0.58
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.85 2
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.7 0.78

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 8,678.00 16,979.00
Queries per second 86,780.00 169,790.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.51 0.38
Average Latency (ms) 1.15 0.59
Maximum Latency (ms) 18.84 4.13
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.67 0.8

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 67,961.00 156,424.00
Queries per second 679,610.00 1,564,240.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.03
Average Latency (ms) 0.15 0.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 18.86 4.87
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.83 0.07

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
PING_INLINE per Second 80,450.52 88,652.48
PING_MBULK per Second 89,047.20 89,605.73
SET per Second 84,602.37 90,171.33
GET per Second 86,281.27 90,579.71
INCR per Second 77,220.08 90,744.10
LPUSH per Second 71,942.45 90,497.73
RPUSH per Second 82,304.52 90,415.91
LPOP per Second 83,892.62 90,909.09
RPOP per Second 85,836.91 90,661.83
SADD per Second 87,108.02 90,252.70
HSET per Second 84,388.19 90,415.91
SPOP per Second 79,239.30 89,928.05
ZADD per Second 82,440.23 90,415.91
ZPOPMIN per Second 81,499.59 90,009.01
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 44,702.73 66,533.60
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 22,276.68 36,179.45
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 14,349.26 26,239.83
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 12,738.85 22,547.91
MSET (10 keys) per Second 73,746.31 88,105.73

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
PING_INLINE0.410.30
PING_MBULK0.320.29
SET0.400.29
GET0.370.29
INCR0.380.28
LPUSH0.370.29
RPUSH0.340.29
LPOP0.320.28
RPOP0.400.28
SADD0.320.29
HSET0.340.29
SPOP0.390.29
ZADD0.390.29
ZPOPMIN0.330.29
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.680.39
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.370.71
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)2.060.97
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)2.401.14
MSET (10 keys)0.370.30

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

When comparing the benchmark performance of the DigitalOcean Premium Intel instance versus the Vultr High Frequency Intel instance, it's clear that Vultr's setup generally outperforms DigitalOcean in most metrics, particularly in CPU and Redis benchmarks where it shows higher RPS and slightly lower latencies. Both instances provide similar memory and I/O performance but Vultr’s CPU clocks in higher, resulting in better overall performance for CPU-intensive tasks. DigitalOcean offers slightly better I/O performance which could be advantageous for workloads requiring high input/output operations. In conclusion, Vultr’s instance is more suitable for applications demanding high CPU performance and throughput, while DigitalOcean’s might be preferred where high I/O performance is a priority.

From the friendly human:

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