DigitalOcean Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) vs. Vultr Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Same showdown, different day. Today I've spun up brand new instance from DigitalOcean and Vultr to run some benchmarks on. Each instance was running Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and all resided in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Enough talk. Here's the data.
Overview
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Last Benchmarked | Sun, 24 May 2026 03:00:52 GMT | Sat, 23 May 2026 11:00:52 GMT |
| Linux Distro | Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 | Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 |
| Kernel Version | 6.8.0-71-generic | 6.8.0-117-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 | $32.00 | $40.00 |
| RAM (GB) | 4 | 8 |
| CPU Cores | 2 | 4 |
| Storage (TB) | 120 | 160 |
| Storage Type | NVMe | SSD |
| Transfer (TB) | 4 | 4 |
CPU
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | GenuineIntel | GenuineIntel |
| Model Name | DO-Premium-Intel | Intel Xeon Processor (Skylake, IBRS) |
| Clock Speed (MHz) | 2,494.14 | 2,593.90 |
| CPU Cache Size (KB) | 4,096.00 | 16,384.00 |
| BogoMips | 4,988.28 | 5,187.80 |
| Events per Second | 1,088.83 | 1,100.82 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.81 | 0.88 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.92 | 0.91 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 1.99 | 1.56 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0.97 | 0.97 |
Memory
Memory Read
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Operations per second | 5,105,925.02 | 3,685,781.23 |
| Mebibytes per second | 4,986.25 | 3,599.40 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 0.11 | 1.03 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
Memory Write
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Operations per second | 5,076,161.98 | 3,590,629.63 |
| Mebibytes per second | 4,957.19 | 3,506.47 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 0.1 | 1.16 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
File I/O
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Reads per Second | 4,581.24 | 4,999.39 |
| Writes per Second | 3,054.16 | 3,332.93 |
| Fsyncs per Second | 9,776.71 | 10,670.47 |
| Read Mebibytes per Second | 71.58 | 78.12 |
| Written Mebibytes per Second | 47.72 | 52.08 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.06 | 0.05 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 14.69 | 37.52 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0.19 | 0.18 |
Mutex
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 780.65 | 369.37 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 839.24 | 416.22 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 872.44 | 441.77 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 877.61 | 442.73 |
MySQL
MySQL Read-only
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 7,669.00 | 5,144.00 |
| Queries per second | 76,690.00 | 51,440.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 1.11 | 1.72 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 1.3 | 1.94 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 2.88 | 7.67 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 1.67 | 2.35 |
MySQL Write-only
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 7,801.00 | 5,108.00 |
| Queries per second | 78,010.00 | 51,080.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.81 | 1.15 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 1.28 | 1.96 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 6.33 | 12.52 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 1.73 | 2.71 |
MySQL Read/Write
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 3,641.00 | 2,247.00 |
| Queries per second | 36,410.00 | 22,470.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 1.9 | 3.08 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 2.74 | 4.45 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 5.61 | 29.7 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 3.68 | 5.28 |
MySQL INSERT
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 12,456.00 | 7,630.00 |
| Queries per second | 124,560.00 | 76,300.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.46 | 0.71 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.8 | 1.31 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 3.58 | 29.81 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 1.18 | 1.55 |
MySQL Bulk INSERT
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 1,375,842.00 | 898,571.00 |
| Queries per second | 13,758,420.00 | 8,985,710.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.01 | 0.01 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 337.69 | 505.86 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
MySQL SELECT
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 199,885.00 | 149,465.00 |
| Queries per second | 1,998,850.00 | 1,494,650.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.03 | 0.05 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.05 | 0.07 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 1.44 | 1.22 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0.07 | 0.09 |
MySQL SELECT (Random Points)
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 7,080.00 | 4,249.00 |
| Queries per second | 70,800.00 | 42,490.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.49 | 0.83 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 1.41 | 2.35 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 4.97 | 6.6 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 1.82 | 3.02 |
MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 7,260.00 | 2,637.00 |
| Queries per second | 72,600.00 | 26,370.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.41 | 0.94 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 1.38 | 3.79 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 3.3 | 6.3 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 1.82 | 5.09 |
MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 12,270.00 | 7,166.00 |
| Queries per second | 122,700.00 | 71,660.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.44 | 0.7 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.81 | 1.39 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 4.31 | 28.84 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 1.21 | 1.79 |
MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 13,228.00 | 7,661.00 |
| Queries per second | 132,280.00 | 76,610.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.45 | 0.7 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.75 | 1.3 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 2.66 | 33.97 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 1.06 | 1.58 |
MySQL DELETE
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 131,639.00 | 69,690.00 |
| Queries per second | 1,316,390.00 | 696,900.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.03 | 0.05 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.08 | 0.14 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 4.28 | 27.73 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0.1 | 0.87 |
Redis
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| PING_INLINE per Second | 97,087.38 | 54,436.58 |
| PING_MBULK per Second | 99,601.60 | 48,828.12 |
| SET per Second | 98,814.23 | 51,572.98 |
| GET per Second | 101,626.02 | 48,239.27 |
| INCR per Second | 100,300.91 | 52,328.62 |
| LPUSH per Second | 100,000.00 | 45,454.54 |
| RPUSH per Second | 99,009.90 | 49,751.24 |
| LPOP per Second | 100,300.91 | 53,390.28 |
| RPOP per Second | 99,206.34 | 53,648.07 |
| SADD per Second | 98,911.96 | 48,285.85 |
| HSET per Second | 97,560.98 | 51,493.30 |
| SPOP per Second | 98,328.42 | 52,910.05 |
| ZADD per Second | 98,231.83 | 53,504.55 |
| ZPOPMIN per Second | 96,432.02 | 53,590.57 |
| LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second | 62,932.66 | 28,645.09 |
| LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second | 29,542.10 | 13,131.98 |
| LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second | 19,790.22 | 8,529.51 |
| LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second | 16,869.10 | 7,479.99 |
| MSET (10 keys) per Second | 98,716.68 | 49,212.60 |
Redis Average Latency (ms)
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| PING_INLINE | 0.29 | 0.47 |
| PING_MBULK | 0.28 | 0.53 |
| SET | 0.27 | 0.50 |
| GET | 0.26 | 0.54 |
| INCR | 0.26 | 0.49 |
| LPUSH | 0.26 | 0.58 |
| RPUSH | 0.28 | 0.52 |
| LPOP | 0.26 | 0.49 |
| RPOP | 0.26 | 0.48 |
| SADD | 0.27 | 0.54 |
| HSET | 0.31 | 0.53 |
| SPOP | 0.27 | 0.49 |
| ZADD | 0.28 | 0.48 |
| ZPOPMIN | 0.30 | 0.48 |
| LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) | 0.44 | 0.91 |
| LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) | 0.93 | 1.94 |
| LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) | 1.44 | 3.00 |
| LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) | 1.72 | 3.43 |
| MSET (10 keys) | 0.28 | 0.77 |
Conclusion
From the friendly robots:
The DigitalOcean Premium Intel instance delivers slightly higher Redis performance in most operations, achieving higher requests per second and lower average latencies across a range of operations, although both providers perform admirably. The Vultr Cloud Compute instance, with more CPU cores and RAM, shows slightly better CPU and file I/O performance, with higher throughput rates and lower average latencies in file I/O operations. Memory performance is also superior on the Vultr instance, with higher operations per second and lower latencies for both read and write operations. For developers needing high Redis throughput and low latency, the DigitalOcean instance is preferable. However, for workloads demanding more CPU power and higher throughput with better file I/O and memory performance, the Vultr Cloud Compute instance is the better choice.
From the friendly human:
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