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

vs.

My friend, I'm so glad you're here! Today I've spun up some brand new instance from DigitalOcean and Vultr to run some benchmarks on. All instances were spun up with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and were created in the New York area (or close to it). Without further ado, here's the results.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Last Benchmarked Sat, 30 May 2026 22:00:52 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 $16.00 $18.00
RAM (GB) 2 2
CPU Cores 1 2
Storage (TB) 70 80
Storage Type NVMe NVMe
Transfer (TB) 2 3

CPU

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) 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 495.64 1,552.05
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.91 0.62
Average Latency (ms) 2.01 0.64
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.47 4.61
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.19 0.69

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Operations per second 3,562,900.21 7,875,668.83
Mebibytes per second 3,479.39 7,691.08
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.78 0.12
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Operations per second 4,559,986.14 7,729,812.11
Mebibytes per second 4,453.11 7,548.64
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.03 0.16
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Reads per Second 2,991.18 4,671.85
Writes per Second 1,994.09 3,114.56
Fsyncs per Second 6,381.40 9,976.90
Read Mebibytes per Second 46.74 73.00
Written Mebibytes per Second 31.16 48.67
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.09 0.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 9.55 2.76
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.25 0.17

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Minimum Latency (ms) 2,305.94 543.27
Average Latency (ms) 2,325.82 554.74
Maximum Latency (ms) 2,341.18 563.70
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2,320.55 559.50

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 5,642.00 10,621.00
Queries per second 56,420.00 106,210.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.09 0.86
Average Latency (ms) 1.77 0.94
Maximum Latency (ms) 7.6 2.5
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.26 1.03

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 6,500.00 10,229.00
Queries per second 65,000.00 102,290.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.69 0.64
Average Latency (ms) 1.54 0.98
Maximum Latency (ms) 18.05 2.08
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.07 1.23

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 2,286.00 5,072.00
Queries per second 22,860.00 50,720.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.63 1.59
Average Latency (ms) 4.37 1.97
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.8 3.94
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5.88 2.39

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 8,299.00 16,038.00
Queries per second 82,990.00 160,380.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.48 0.38
Average Latency (ms) 1.2 0.62
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.9 13.18
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.93 0.8

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 964,103.00 2,424,342.00
Queries per second 9,641,030.00 24,243,420.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 474.48 205.81
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 181,396.00 241,313.00
Queries per second 1,813,960.00 2,413,130.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.03
Average Latency (ms) 0.05 0.04
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.44 0.76
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.08 0.05

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 8,155.00 12,080.00
Queries per second 81,550.00 120,800.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.47 0.21
Average Latency (ms) 1.22 0.83
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.12 3.31
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.58 1.04

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 8,540.00 10,527.00
Queries per second 85,400.00 105,270.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.33 0.16
Average Latency (ms) 1.17 0.95
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.83 3.25
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.52 1.23

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 7,509.00 17,123.00
Queries per second 75,090.00 171,230.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.5 0.38
Average Latency (ms) 1.33 0.58
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.77 2
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.26 0.78

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 9,508.00 16,979.00
Queries per second 95,080.00 169,790.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.46 0.38
Average Latency (ms) 1.05 0.59
Maximum Latency (ms) 11.78 4.13
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.52 0.8

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 85,917.00 156,424.00
Queries per second 859,170.00 1,564,240.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.03 0.03
Average Latency (ms) 0.12 0.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 7.24 4.87
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.29 0.07

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
PING_INLINE per Second 83,263.95 88,652.48
PING_MBULK per Second 86,880.97 89,605.73
SET per Second 82,987.55 90,171.33
GET per Second 85,616.44 90,579.71
INCR per Second 84,674.01 90,744.10
LPUSH per Second 82,781.46 90,497.73
RPUSH per Second 84,530.86 90,415.91
LPOP per Second 82,781.46 90,909.09
RPOP per Second 81,967.21 90,661.83
SADD per Second 84,317.03 90,252.70
HSET per Second 76,923.08 90,415.91
SPOP per Second 86,058.52 89,928.05
ZADD per Second 82,034.45 90,415.91
ZPOPMIN per Second 84,817.64 90,009.01
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 42,176.30 66,533.60
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 19,331.14 36,179.45
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 12,430.08 26,239.83
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 10,767.74 22,547.91
MSET (10 keys) per Second 72,886.30 88,105.73

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
PING_INLINE0.390.30
PING_MBULK0.370.29
SET0.390.29
GET0.380.29
INCR0.380.28
LPUSH0.390.29
RPUSH0.390.29
LPOP0.400.28
RPOP0.400.28
SADD0.390.29
HSET0.420.29
SPOP0.380.29
ZADD0.400.29
ZPOPMIN0.380.29
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.860.39
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.910.71
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)2.950.97
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)3.391.14
MSET (10 keys)0.480.30

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The benchmark results show that the Vultr High Frequency Intel instance outperforms the DigitalOcean Premium Intel instance across most metrics, particularly in CPU and memory operations, where it achieves higher requests per second and lower latency. The Vultr instance, with its dual-core configuration and slightly higher clock speed, provides superior performance in CPU-intensive tasks and complex memory operations. It also excels in file I/O operations, though both instances offer strong file throughput capabilities. While DigitalOcean's instance has competitive benchmarks in certain aspects, such as Redis operations, the overall superior CPU and memory performance of the Vultr instance makes it a better choice for workloads that demand high processing power and rapid memory access, such as large-scale data processing or high-traffic web services.

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 directly by buying me a coffee.