VPS Showdown VPS Showdown

DigitalOcean Premium Intel (2 GB) vs. Vultr Cloud Compute (1 GB)

vs.

Fresh benchmarks coming at ya. Today I've got brand new 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 or around the New York / New Jersey area. Time to see who showed up today.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Last Benchmarked Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:35:51 GMT Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:30:37 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 Newark, NJ
Monthly Price $16.00 $5.00
RAM (GB) 2 1
CPU Cores 1 1
Storage (TB) 70 25
Storage Type NVMe SSD
Transfer (TB) 2 1

Head-to-head

Category winners from the latest benchmarks.

CategoryWinner
CPU (events/sec)Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 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)Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) takes 4 of 6 categories.

CPU

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Vendor GenuineIntel GenuineIntel
Model Name DO-Premium-Intel Intel Core Processor (Broadwell, no TSX, IBRS)
Clock Speed (MHz) 2,494.15 2,394.45
CPU Cache Size (KB) 4,096.00 16,384.00
BogoMips 4,988.29 4,788.90
Events per Second 562.17 704.30
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.93 1.23
Average Latency (ms) 1.78 1.42
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.62 3.04
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.13 1.73

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Operations per second 4,915,996.46 3,595,908.88
Mebibytes per second 4,800.78 3,511.63
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.43 0.61
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Operations per second 4,788,946.98 3,455,305.83
Mebibytes per second 4,676.71 3,374.32
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.26 4.29
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Reads per Second 4,376.99 1,878.82
Writes per Second 2,917.99 1,252.51
Fsyncs per Second 9,337.68 4,014.75
Read Mebibytes per Second 68.39 29.36
Written Mebibytes per Second 45.59 19.57
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.06 0.14
Maximum Latency (ms) 6.27 11.08
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.21 0.4

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 1,688.69 2,084.67
Average Latency (ms) 1,696.46 2,093.52
Maximum Latency (ms) 1,701.64 2,098.38
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1,708.63 2,082.91

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 8,936.00 4,684.00
Queries per second 89,360.00 46,840.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.01 1.71
Average Latency (ms) 1.12 2.13
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.9 9.23
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.3 3.02

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 7,876.00 3,785.00
Queries per second 78,760.00 37,850.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.79 1.46
Average Latency (ms) 1.27 2.64
Maximum Latency (ms) 9.88 33.7
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.79 3.82

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 2,982.00 2,104.00
Queries per second 29,820.00 21,040.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.04 3.41
Average Latency (ms) 3.35 4.75
Maximum Latency (ms) 65.11 10.72
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 6.43 6.91

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 15,748.00 7,970.00
Queries per second 157,480.00 79,700.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.45 0.8
Average Latency (ms) 0.63 1.25
Maximum Latency (ms) 11.93 22.57
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.92 1.7

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 1,404,967.00 734,741.00
Queries per second 14,049,670.00 7,347,410.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 298.75 700.22
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 202,254.00 107,531.00
Queries per second 2,022,540.00 1,075,310.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.03 0.07
Average Latency (ms) 0.05 0.09
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.24 1.82
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.08 0.13

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 4,187.00 3,796.00
Queries per second 41,870.00 37,960.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.65 0.93
Average Latency (ms) 2.38 2.63
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.81 7.47
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.75 3.82

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 6,928.00 5,117.00
Queries per second 69,280.00 51,170.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.51 0.67
Average Latency (ms) 1.44 1.95
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.75 5.04
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.43 3.19

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 14,135.00 7,164.00
Queries per second 141,350.00 71,640.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.47 0.82
Average Latency (ms) 0.71 1.39
Maximum Latency (ms) 12.96 28.24
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.01 2.03

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 14,372.00 7,738.00
Queries per second 143,720.00 77,380.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.46 0.78
Average Latency (ms) 0.69 1.29
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.98 17.75
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.97 1.76

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 161,486.00 52,919.00
Queries per second 1,614,860.00 529,190.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.03 0.07
Average Latency (ms) 0.06 0.19
Maximum Latency (ms) 6.57 26.33
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.09 1.04

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 66,533.60 28,835.06
PING_MBULK per Second 67,159.17 30,778.70
SET per Second 61,087.36 28,918.45
GET per Second 72,568.94 28,669.72
INCR per Second 69,396.25 30,656.04
LPUSH per Second 46,168.05 30,911.90
RPUSH per Second 50,916.50 26,968.72
LPOP per Second 51,894.13 30,618.49
RPOP per Second 47,348.48 31,123.56
SADD per Second 60,060.06 30,358.23
HSET per Second 68,587.11 29,299.74
SPOP per Second 67,249.50 30,627.87
ZADD per Second 71,377.59 30,358.23
ZPOPMIN per Second 71,684.59 31,367.63
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 37,523.45 22,138.59
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 17,708.52 11,909.01
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 11,918.95 7,708.32
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 9,573.04 7,203.57
MSET (10 keys) per Second 53,248.14 30,312.21

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
PING_INLINE0.471.04
PING_MBULK0.470.96
SET0.531.05
GET0.441.05
INCR0.460.98
LPUSH0.700.98
RPUSH0.641.15
LPOP0.651.00
RPOP0.700.98
SADD0.530.99
HSET0.471.03
SPOP0.470.97
ZADD0.451.00
ZPOPMIN0.440.95
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.891.44
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.842.62
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)2.793.84
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)3.344.05
MSET (10 keys)0.761.07

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The DigitalOcean Premium Intel (2 GB) instance outperforms the Vultr Cloud Compute (1 GB) in most benchmarks. For Redis operations, DigitalOcean's instance averages higher requests per second (rps) across various commands, like SET (61,087.36 vs 28,918.45 rps) and GET (72,568.94 vs 28,669.72 rps), as well as lower latencies. DigitalOcean also has superior CPU benchmark results, with more events per second (562.17 vs 704.3) and lower average CPU latency (1.78 ms vs 1.42 ms). For use-cases, DigitalOcean is ideal for CPU-heavy or memory-intensive tasks, offering more headroom at a slightly higher cost.

From the friendly human:

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