My friend, I'm so glad you're here! Today I've spun up brand new instance from DigitalOcean and Vultr and ran some benchmarks. Each instance was spun up with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and all resided in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Time to see who showed up today.
Overview
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Last Benchmarked
Thu, 11 Jun 2026 13:00:52 GMT
Thu, 11 Jun 2026 09:00:52 GMT
Linux Distro
Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64
Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version
6.8.0-71-generic
6.8.0-124-generic
MySQL Version
8.0.46-0ubuntu0.24.04.2
8.0.46-0ubuntu0.24.04.2
Redis Version
7.0.15
7.0.15
Location
New York, NY
Newark, NJ
Monthly Price
$32.00
$20.00
RAM (GB)
4
4
CPU Cores
2
2
Storage (TB)
120
80
Storage Type
NVMe
SSD
Transfer (TB)
4
3
CPU
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
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
5,187.81
Events per Second
1,049.23
1,022.39
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.91
0.88
Average Latency (ms)
0.95
0.98
Maximum Latency (ms)
1.45
1.77
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
1.14
1.21
Memory
Memory Read
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Operations per second
4,596,221.26
3,523,809.57
Mebibytes per second
4,488.50
3,441.22
Minimum Latency (ms)
0
0
Average Latency (ms)
0
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
2.51
0.22
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
0
0
Memory Write
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Operations per second
4,826,784.83
3,568,203.77
Mebibytes per second
4,713.66
3,484.57
Minimum Latency (ms)
0
0
Average Latency (ms)
0
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
0.1
1.02
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
0
0
File I/O
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Reads per Second
3,490.65
2,972.63
Writes per Second
2,327.10
1,981.75
Fsyncs per Second
7,456.94
6,347.81
Read Mebibytes per Second
54.54
46.45
Written Mebibytes per Second
36.36
30.96
Minimum Latency (ms)
0
0
Average Latency (ms)
0.07
0.09
Maximum Latency (ms)
16.88
17.12
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
0.23
0.33
Mutex
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Minimum Latency (ms)
875.80
899.28
Average Latency (ms)
897.86
935.93
Maximum Latency (ms)
917.86
969.92
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
909.80
977.74
MySQL
MySQL Read-only
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second
7,043.00
3,779.00
Queries per second
70,430.00
37,790.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
1.09
1.84
Average Latency (ms)
1.42
2.64
Maximum Latency (ms)
2.9
24.55
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
1.82
3.82
MySQL Write-only
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second
5,427.00
4,044.00
Queries per second
54,270.00
40,440.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.85
1.4
Average Latency (ms)
1.84
2.47
Maximum Latency (ms)
7.61
13.46
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
2.76
3.3
MySQL Read/Write
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second
2,518.00
1,798.00
Queries per second
25,180.00
17,980.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
2.19
3.86
Average Latency (ms)
3.97
5.56
Maximum Latency (ms)
163
27.33
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
4.82
6.91
MySQL INSERT
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second
10,707.00
6,405.00
Queries per second
107,070.00
64,050.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.49
0.99
Average Latency (ms)
0.93
1.56
Maximum Latency (ms)
4.1
15.15
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
1.39
2.03
MySQL Bulk INSERT
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second
800,273.00
865,805.00
Queries per second
8,002,730.00
8,658,050.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0
0
Average Latency (ms)
0.01
0.01
Maximum Latency (ms)
2714.71
538.25
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
0
0
MySQL SELECT
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second
188,402.00
126,618.00
Queries per second
1,884,020.00
1,266,180.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.04
0.05
Average Latency (ms)
0.05
0.08
Maximum Latency (ms)
0.69
2.46
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
0.07
0.11
MySQL SELECT (Random Points)
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second
4,692.00
3,674.00
Queries per second
46,920.00
36,740.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.63
1.07
Average Latency (ms)
2.13
2.72
Maximum Latency (ms)
7.62
6.45
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
3.13
3.55
MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second
6,472.00
2,728.00
Queries per second
64,720.00
27,280.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.54
1.3
Average Latency (ms)
1.54
3.66
Maximum Latency (ms)
4.09
11.85
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
2.52
5
MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second
9,320.00
5,438.00
Queries per second
93,200.00
54,380.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.49
0.99
Average Latency (ms)
1.07
1.84
Maximum Latency (ms)
15.59
13.86
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
1.67
2.71
MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second
9,365.00
6,370.00
Queries per second
93,650.00
63,700.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.51
1.01
Average Latency (ms)
1.07
1.57
Maximum Latency (ms)
44.87
8.99
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
1.61
2.07
MySQL DELETE
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second
113,287.00
51,180.00
Queries per second
1,132,870.00
511,800.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.03
0.05
Average Latency (ms)
0.09
0.19
Maximum Latency (ms)
7.53
6.11
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
0.12
1.39
Redis
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
PING_INLINE per Second
77,881.62
49,677.10
PING_MBULK per Second
77,760.50
45,372.05
SET per Second
85,543.20
45,392.64
GET per Second
87,565.68
53,163.21
INCR per Second
90,909.09
48,732.94
LPUSH per Second
82,644.62
50,327.12
RPUSH per Second
85,106.38
48,285.85
LPOP per Second
86,580.09
48,355.90
RPOP per Second
82,576.38
51,413.88
SADD per Second
78,492.93
48,332.53
HSET per Second
88,888.89
49,285.36
SPOP per Second
76,745.97
48,332.53
ZADD per Second
74,019.25
51,229.51
ZPOPMIN per Second
84,104.29
45,085.66
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second
52,002.08
27,122.32
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second
25,335.70
12,442.45
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second
16,600.27
7,930.21
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second
14,609.20
6,902.74
MSET (10 keys) per Second
115,473.45
45,146.73
Redis Average Latency (ms)
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
PING_INLINE
0.34
0.53
PING_MBULK
0.34
0.57
SET
0.32
0.57
GET
0.31
0.49
INCR
0.32
0.53
LPUSH
0.36
0.51
RPUSH
0.32
0.54
LPOP
0.32
0.54
RPOP
0.46
0.52
SADD
0.34
0.55
HSET
0.31
0.54
SPOP
0.35
0.54
ZADD
0.39
0.52
ZPOPMIN
0.33
0.57
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)
0.59
1.02
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)
1.12
2.29
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)
1.72
3.27
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)
1.92
3.91
MSET (10 keys)
0.25
0.78
Conclusion
From the friendly robots:
Based on the benchmark results, the DigitalOcean Premium Intel instance demonstrates slightly better performance across various metrics, especially in Redis benchmarks with higher requests per second (rps) and lower latencies for most operations. The Vultr Cloud Compute instance shows competitive performance but lags slightly in overall rps and latency in Redis operations, as well as CPU and memory operations. DigitalOcean's instance offers 120GB of storage compared to Vultr's 80GB, and both have similar thread fairness and file IO performance. For workloads that require high Redis throughput and low latency, such as caching and real-time data processing, DigitalOcean's instance would be more suitable. Conversely, for more general-purpose tasks where the slight performance differences are less critical and budget is a concern, the Vultr instance provides a cost-effective alternative.
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.