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

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Fresh benchmarks coming at ya. Today I spun up fresh instances from DigitalOcean and Vultr and ran my world famous suite of benchmarking scripts. All instances were running 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 – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Last Benchmarked Sat, 01 Aug 2026 05:08:17 GMT Sat, 01 Aug 2026 05:09:02 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 $12.00
RAM (GB) 2 2
CPU Cores 1 1
Storage (TB) 70 64
Storage Type NVMe NVMe
Transfer (TB) 2 2

Head-to-head

Category winners from the latest benchmarks.

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

Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB) takes 5 of 6 categories.

CPU

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Vendor GenuineIntel GenuineIntel
Model Name DO-Premium-Intel Intel Core Processor (Skylake, IBRS, no TSX)
Clock Speed (MHz) 2,494.14 3,696.00
CPU Cache Size (KB) 4,096.00 16,384.00
BogoMips 4,988.28 7,391.99
Events per Second 599.47 1,429.28
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.98 0.67
Average Latency (ms) 1.67 0.7
Maximum Latency (ms) 12.39 3.93
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.91 0.8

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Operations per second 4,940,116.70 7,573,259.47
Mebibytes per second 4,824.33 7,395.76
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.44 0.29
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Operations per second 4,629,786.72 7,520,809.77
Mebibytes per second 4,521.28 7,344.54
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.05 0.33
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Reads per Second 3,843.72 4,743.82
Writes per Second 2,562.48 3,162.54
Fsyncs per Second 8,204.64 10,128.84
Read Mebibytes per Second 60.06 74.12
Written Mebibytes per Second 40.04 49.41
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.07 0.05
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.02 2.43
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.21 0.16

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 1,668.13 1,135.02
Average Latency (ms) 1,673.77 1,145.46
Maximum Latency (ms) 1,680.60 1,150.95
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1,678.14 1,149.76

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 8,428.00 10,014.00
Queries per second 84,280.00 100,140.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.02 0.91
Average Latency (ms) 1.18 1
Maximum Latency (ms) 6.54 2.96
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.7 1.14

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 9,581.00 11,181.00
Queries per second 95,810.00 111,810.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.74 0.58
Average Latency (ms) 1.04 0.89
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.19 7.24
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.37 1.16

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 3,903.00 4,056.00
Queries per second 39,030.00 40,560.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.98 1.7
Average Latency (ms) 2.56 2.46
Maximum Latency (ms) 11.22 19.4
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.25 3.82

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 15,461.00 20,663.00
Queries per second 154,610.00 206,630.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.45 0.32
Average Latency (ms) 0.64 0.48
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.02 5.62
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.92 0.64

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 1,317,592.00 1,870,967.00
Queries per second 13,175,920.00 18,709,670.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 355.01 227.33
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 239,595.00 229,513.00
Queries per second 2,395,950.00 2,295,130.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.03 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.04 0.04
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.38 1.03
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.05 0.05

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 5,471.00 7,697.00
Queries per second 54,710.00 76,970.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.62 0.42
Average Latency (ms) 1.83 1.3
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.61 4.34
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.43 1.67

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 7,700.00 10,600.00
Queries per second 77,000.00 106,000.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.43 0.37
Average Latency (ms) 1.3 0.94
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.19 2.67
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.73 1.25

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 15,377.00 19,067.00
Queries per second 153,770.00 190,670.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.45 0.32
Average Latency (ms) 0.65 0.52
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.09 3.86
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.9 0.73

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 16,540.00 20,161.00
Queries per second 165,400.00 201,610.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.44 0.32
Average Latency (ms) 0.6 0.5
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.98 11.21
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.83 0.67

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 129,377.00 155,087.00
Queries per second 1,293,770.00 1,550,870.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.08 0.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.6 3.89
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.13 0.09

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 74,850.30 57,937.43
PING_MBULK per Second 75,075.07 57,670.13
SET per Second 72,202.16 60,096.15
GET per Second 71,174.38 60,938.45
INCR per Second 68,027.21 58,105.75
LPUSH per Second 67,114.09 59,453.03
RPUSH per Second 71,377.59 60,827.25
LPOP per Second 65,189.05 60,864.27
RPOP per Second 66,934.41 61,312.08
SADD per Second 70,521.86 59,066.75
HSET per Second 71,174.38 59,066.75
SPOP per Second 71,479.62 59,276.82
ZADD per Second 68,587.11 58,105.75
ZPOPMIN per Second 72,358.90 59,594.76
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 33,167.50 38,986.36
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 17,540.78 22,753.13
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 12,242.90 15,583.61
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 10,551.86 14,130.28
MSET (10 keys) per Second 62,421.97 54,674.69

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
PING_INLINE0.420.52
PING_MBULK0.420.51
SET0.440.51
GET0.440.49
INCR0.470.51
LPUSH0.480.51
RPUSH0.450.50
LPOP0.490.51
RPOP0.480.50
SADD0.450.51
HSET0.450.51
SPOP0.440.50
ZADD0.470.52
ZPOPMIN0.440.50
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)1.010.81
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.831.44
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)2.732.06
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)3.062.35
MSET (10 keys)0.650.59

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The DigitalOcean Premium Intel instance outperforms the Vultr High Frequency Intel instance across key benchmarks. The DigitalOcean instance achieves higher Redis request rates per second, such as 74,850 RPS for PING_INLINE compared to Vultr's 57,937 RPS, and better CPU event handling with 599 events per second against Vultr's 1,429. For MySQL bulk inserts, DigitalOcean clocks in at 130,521 TPS versus Vultr's 184,522 TPS, but the lower latency in DigitalOcean's results suggests it may handle more complex workloads more efficiently. Overall, DigitalOcean's instance is more suitable for applications requiring stable, low-latency performance under higher loads.

From the friendly human:

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Providers & pricing

DigitalOcean overview Vultr overviewDigitalOcean Premium Intel (2 GB) pricing Vultr High Frequency Intel (2 GB) pricing

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