VPS Showdown VPS Showdown

DigitalOcean Regular (2 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Premium Intel (2 GB)

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New day, new benchmarks. Today I spun up fresh instances from DigitalOcean and did some benchmarking. All instances were running Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 and were created in the New York area (or close to it). Enough talk. Here's the data.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Last Benchmarked Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:31:21 GMT Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:35:51 GMT
Linux Distro Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version 7.0.0-27-generic 7.0.0-27-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 New York, NY
Monthly Price $12.00 $16.00
RAM (GB) 2 2
CPU Cores 1 1
Storage (TB) 50 70
Storage Type SSD NVMe
Transfer (TB) 2 2

Head-to-head

Category winners from the latest benchmarks.

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

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) takes 6 of 6 categories.

CPU

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Vendor GenuineIntel GenuineIntel
Model Name DO-Regular DO-Premium-Intel
Clock Speed (MHz) 2,494.14 2,494.15
CPU Cache Size (KB) 4,096.00 4,096.00
BogoMips 4,988.28 4,988.29
Events per Second 411.59 562.17
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.99 0.93
Average Latency (ms) 2.42 1.78
Maximum Latency (ms) 19.9 10.62
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.96 3.13

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Operations per second 4,123,717.02 4,915,996.46
Mebibytes per second 4,027.07 4,800.78
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.54 0.43
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Operations per second 4,007,053.05 4,788,946.98
Mebibytes per second 3,913.14 4,676.71
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.82 2.26
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Reads per Second 2,758.95 4,376.99
Writes per Second 1,839.23 2,917.99
Fsyncs per Second 5,895.77 9,337.68
Read Mebibytes per Second 43.11 68.39
Written Mebibytes per Second 28.74 45.59
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.09 0.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 11.81 6.27
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.3 0.21

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 2,498.24 1,688.69
Average Latency (ms) 2,546.75 1,696.46
Maximum Latency (ms) 2,562.19 1,701.64
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2,585.31 1,708.63

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 5,626.00 8,936.00
Queries per second 56,260.00 89,360.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.18 1.01
Average Latency (ms) 1.77 1.12
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.44 2.9
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.39 1.3

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 4,813.00 7,876.00
Queries per second 48,130.00 78,760.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.92 0.79
Average Latency (ms) 2.07 1.27
Maximum Latency (ms) 29.26 9.88
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.19 1.79

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 1,931.00 2,982.00
Queries per second 19,310.00 29,820.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.94 2.04
Average Latency (ms) 5.17 3.35
Maximum Latency (ms) 17.66 65.11
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 7.17 6.43

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 6,585.00 15,748.00
Queries per second 65,850.00 157,480.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.56 0.45
Average Latency (ms) 1.51 0.63
Maximum Latency (ms) 11.88 11.93
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.71 0.92

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 833,039.00 1,404,967.00
Queries per second 8,330,390.00 14,049,670.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 568.39 298.75
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 148,439.00 202,254.00
Queries per second 1,484,390.00 2,022,540.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.03
Average Latency (ms) 0.07 0.05
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.95 4.24
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.1 0.08

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 3,505.00 4,187.00
Queries per second 35,050.00 41,870.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.98 0.65
Average Latency (ms) 2.85 2.38
Maximum Latency (ms) 6.79 5.81
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.25 3.75

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 5,769.00 6,928.00
Queries per second 57,690.00 69,280.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.53 0.51
Average Latency (ms) 1.73 1.44
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.73 3.75
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.66 2.43

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 6,299.00 14,135.00
Queries per second 62,990.00 141,350.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.57 0.47
Average Latency (ms) 1.58 0.71
Maximum Latency (ms) 28.52 12.96
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.07 1.01

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 7,198.00 14,372.00
Queries per second 71,980.00 143,720.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.51 0.46
Average Latency (ms) 1.39 0.69
Maximum Latency (ms) 167.69 8.98
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.35 0.97

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 33,426.00 161,486.00
Queries per second 334,260.00 1,614,860.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.03
Average Latency (ms) 0.3 0.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 22.19 6.57
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.61 0.09

Redis

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 34,188.04 66,533.60
PING_MBULK per Second 44,483.99 67,159.17
SET per Second 40,112.31 61,087.36
GET per Second 40,883.07 72,568.94
INCR per Second 39,729.84 69,396.25
LPUSH per Second 40,404.04 46,168.05
RPUSH per Second 37,397.16 50,916.50
LPOP per Second 37,257.82 51,894.13
RPOP per Second 36,114.12 47,348.48
SADD per Second 37,425.15 60,060.06
HSET per Second 38,759.69 68,587.11
SPOP per Second 45,641.26 67,249.50
ZADD per Second 42,283.30 71,377.59
ZPOPMIN per Second 47,438.33 71,684.59
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 23,089.36 37,523.45
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 12,169.89 17,708.52
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 8,394.19 11,918.95
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 6,932.89 9,573.04
MSET (10 keys) per Second 31,796.50 53,248.14

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
PING_INLINE0.940.47
PING_MBULK0.690.47
SET0.770.53
GET0.750.44
INCR0.780.46
LPUSH0.780.70
RPUSH0.840.64
LPOP0.850.65
RPOP0.870.70
SADD0.830.53
HSET0.810.47
SPOP0.680.47
ZADD0.740.45
ZPOPMIN0.650.44
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)1.400.89
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)2.631.84
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)3.622.79
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)4.243.34
MSET (10 keys)1.060.76

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The DigitalOcean Premium Intel (2 GB) instance outperforms the Regular (2 GB) instance in both Redis benchmark results and CPU event handling. It achieved significantly higher request per second (rps) rates across various Redis operations, such as "PING_INLINE" (66,534 vs. 34,188) and "SET" (61,087 vs. 40,112). Additionally, the Premium instance shows superior performance in MySQL bulk insert operations (138,919 vs. 82,488 transactions per second). Therefore, for applications requiring high throughput and low latency in both database and CPU-intensive tasks, the Premium Intel (2 GB) instance is the better choice.

From the friendly human:

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Related comparisons

vs. DigitalOcean Regular (1 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Regular (1 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Premium Intel (1 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Premium Intel (1 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Premium AMD (1 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Premium AMD (1 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Premium AMD (2 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Premium AMD (2 GB)