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

vs.

Same showdown, different day. Today I spun up fresh instances from DigitalOcean and Vultr to run some benchmarks on. Each instance was running Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 and were created in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Enough talk. Here's the data.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB)
Last Benchmarked Sat, 01 Aug 2026 05:08:17 GMT Sat, 01 Aug 2026 05:06:02 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 $16.00 $10.00
RAM (GB) 2 2
CPU Cores 1 1
Storage (TB) 70 50
Storage Type NVMe SSD
Transfer (TB) 2 2

Head-to-head

Category winners from the latest benchmarks.

CategoryWinner
CPU (events/sec)Vultr – Cloud Compute (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)Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB)

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

CPU

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB)
Vendor GenuineIntel GenuineIntel
Model Name DO-Premium-Intel Intel Xeon Processor (Skylake, IBRS)
Clock Speed (MHz) 2,494.14 2,593.91
CPU Cache Size (KB) 4,096.00 16,384.00
BogoMips 4,988.28 5,187.82
Events per Second 599.47 929.36
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.98 0.95
Average Latency (ms) 1.67 1.07
Maximum Latency (ms) 12.39 2.29
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.91 1.39

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB)
Operations per second 4,940,116.70 3,441,276.65
Mebibytes per second 4,824.33 3,360.62
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.44 1.05
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB)
Operations per second 4,629,786.72 3,505,662.23
Mebibytes per second 4,521.28 3,423.50
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.05 0.71
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB)
Reads per Second 3,843.72 2,556.83
Writes per Second 2,562.48 1,704.52
Fsyncs per Second 8,204.64 5,461.18
Read Mebibytes per Second 60.06 39.95
Written Mebibytes per Second 40.04 26.63
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.07 0.1
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.02 36.01
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.21 0.24

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 1,668.13 1,783.52
Average Latency (ms) 1,673.77 1,799.40
Maximum Latency (ms) 1,680.60 1,810.68
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1,678.14 1,803.47

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB)
Transactions per second 8,428.00 5,535.00
Queries per second 84,280.00 55,350.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.02 1.57
Average Latency (ms) 1.18 1.8
Maximum Latency (ms) 6.54 4.09
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.7 2.07

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB)
Transactions per second 9,581.00 5,739.00
Queries per second 95,810.00 57,390.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.74 1.19
Average Latency (ms) 1.04 1.74
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.19 29.45
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.37 2.35

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB)
Transactions per second 3,903.00 2,265.00
Queries per second 39,030.00 22,650.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.98 3.24
Average Latency (ms) 2.56 4.41
Maximum Latency (ms) 11.22 30.01
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.25 5.67

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB)
Transactions per second 15,461.00 11,053.00
Queries per second 154,610.00 110,530.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.45 0.65
Average Latency (ms) 0.64 0.9
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.02 17.38
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.92 1.16

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB)
Transactions per second 1,317,592.00 701,975.00
Queries per second 13,175,920.00 7,019,750.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 355.01 625.32
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB)
Transactions per second 239,595.00 152,246.00
Queries per second 2,395,950.00 1,522,460.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.03 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.04 0.07
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.38 1.38
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.05 0.1

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB)
Transactions per second 5,471.00 3,020.00
Queries per second 54,710.00 30,200.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.62 0.76
Average Latency (ms) 1.83 3.31
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.61 8.79
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.43 4.33

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB)
Transactions per second 7,700.00 2,424.00
Queries per second 77,000.00 24,240.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.43 1.46
Average Latency (ms) 1.3 4.12
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.19 7.2
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.73 5.47

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB)
Transactions per second 15,377.00 10,298.00
Queries per second 153,770.00 102,980.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.45 0.64
Average Latency (ms) 0.65 0.97
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.09 20.63
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.9 1.39

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB)
Transactions per second 16,540.00 10,146.00
Queries per second 165,400.00 101,460.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.44 0.65
Average Latency (ms) 0.6 0.98
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.98 16.18
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.83 1.34

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB)
Transactions per second 129,377.00 87,018.00
Queries per second 1,293,770.00 870,180.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.08 0.11
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.6 112.3
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.13 0.23

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 74,850.30 31,908.10
PING_MBULK per Second 75,075.07 33,014.20
SET per Second 72,202.16 32,237.27
GET per Second 71,174.38 32,404.41
INCR per Second 68,027.21 33,300.03
LPUSH per Second 67,114.09 32,722.51
RPUSH per Second 71,377.59 32,404.41
LPOP per Second 65,189.05 32,206.12
RPOP per Second 66,934.41 35,063.11
SADD per Second 70,521.86 34,746.35
HSET per Second 71,174.38 35,001.75
SPOP per Second 71,479.62 35,701.54
ZADD per Second 68,587.11 34,602.07
ZPOPMIN per Second 72,358.90 33,898.30
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 33,167.50 16,764.46
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 17,540.78 7,578.63
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 12,242.90 4,631.56
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 10,551.86 4,000.80
MSET (10 keys) per Second 62,421.97 25,297.24

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB)
PING_INLINE0.420.96
PING_MBULK0.420.92
SET0.440.97
GET0.440.95
INCR0.470.94
LPUSH0.480.95
RPUSH0.450.96
LPOP0.490.97
RPOP0.480.90
SADD0.450.89
HSET0.450.90
SPOP0.440.87
ZADD0.470.91
ZPOPMIN0.440.91
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)1.011.84
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.833.87
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)2.736.03
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)3.066.91
MSET (10 keys)0.651.53

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

DigitalOcean's Premium Intel instance outperforms Vultr's Cloud Compute instance in almost all benchmarks, especially evident in the Redis PING_INLINE test where DigitalOcean achieves 74,850 requests per second compared to Vultr's 31,908, and in CPU performance with 599.47 events per second for DigitalOcean versus 929.36 for Vultr. For users prioritizing CPU-heavy tasks and low latency, DigitalOcean's instance provides the better performance and should be chosen, while Vultr's slightly lower monthly cost may appeal to those with a tighter budget.

From the friendly human:

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