DigitalOcean Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) vs. Vultr High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)

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New day, new benchmarks. Today I've spun up brand new instance from DigitalOcean and Vultr and did some benchmarking. Each instance was spun up with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and were created in the New York area (or close to it). Let's get into the numbers.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Last Benchmarked Tue, 02 Jun 2026 10:00:52 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 $32.00 $18.00
RAM (GB) 4 2
CPU Cores 2 2
Storage (TB) 120 80
Storage Type NVMe NVMe
Transfer (TB) 4 3

CPU

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) 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 1,013.24 1,552.05
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.91 0.62
Average Latency (ms) 0.99 0.64
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.46 4.61
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.18 0.69

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Operations per second 4,737,587.61 7,875,668.83
Mebibytes per second 4,626.55 7,691.08
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.19 0.12
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Operations per second 4,690,301.22 7,729,812.11
Mebibytes per second 4,580.37 7,548.64
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.13 0.16
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Reads per Second 3,904.49 4,671.85
Writes per Second 2,603.00 3,114.56
Fsyncs per Second 8,340.46 9,976.90
Read Mebibytes per Second 61.01 73.00
Written Mebibytes per Second 40.67 48.67
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.07 0.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 6.68 2.76
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.23 0.17

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Minimum Latency (ms) 945.06 543.27
Average Latency (ms) 960.64 554.74
Maximum Latency (ms) 978.40 563.70
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 977.74 559.50

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 6,729.00 10,621.00
Queries per second 67,290.00 106,210.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.1 0.86
Average Latency (ms) 1.48 0.94
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.66 2.5
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.03 1.03

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 6,393.00 10,229.00
Queries per second 63,930.00 102,290.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.87 0.64
Average Latency (ms) 1.56 0.98
Maximum Latency (ms) 6.8 2.08
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.22 1.23

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 3,171.00 5,072.00
Queries per second 31,710.00 50,720.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.04 1.59
Average Latency (ms) 3.15 1.97
Maximum Latency (ms) 16.44 3.94
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.18 2.39

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 10,914.00 16,038.00
Queries per second 109,140.00 160,380.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.47 0.38
Average Latency (ms) 0.91 0.62
Maximum Latency (ms) 17.13 13.18
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.42 0.8

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 1,346,717.00 2,424,342.00
Queries per second 13,467,170.00 24,243,420.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 325.43 205.81
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 186,816.00 241,313.00
Queries per second 1,868,160.00 2,413,130.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.03 0.03
Average Latency (ms) 0.05 0.04
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.96 0.76
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.07 0.05

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 6,818.00 12,080.00
Queries per second 68,180.00 120,800.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.51 0.21
Average Latency (ms) 1.46 0.83
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.34 3.31
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.96 1.04

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 7,024.00 10,527.00
Queries per second 70,240.00 105,270.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.52 0.16
Average Latency (ms) 1.42 0.95
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.69 3.25
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.93 1.23

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 10,358.00 17,123.00
Queries per second 103,580.00 171,230.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.48 0.38
Average Latency (ms) 0.96 0.58
Maximum Latency (ms) 6.5 2
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.47 0.78

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 11,283.00 16,979.00
Queries per second 112,830.00 169,790.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.46 0.38
Average Latency (ms) 0.88 0.59
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.44 4.13
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.34 0.8

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 108,489.00 156,424.00
Queries per second 1,084,890.00 1,564,240.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.03
Average Latency (ms) 0.09 0.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.68 4.87
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.12 0.07

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
PING_INLINE per Second 92,250.92 88,652.48
PING_MBULK per Second 93,370.68 89,605.73
SET per Second 88,731.15 90,171.33
GET per Second 94,339.62 90,579.71
INCR per Second 91,491.30 90,744.10
LPUSH per Second 86,132.64 90,497.73
RPUSH per Second 95,602.30 90,415.91
LPOP per Second 73,964.50 90,909.09
RPOP per Second 82,781.46 90,661.83
SADD per Second 79,428.12 90,252.70
HSET per Second 95,147.48 90,415.91
SPOP per Second 82,236.84 89,928.05
ZADD per Second 91,743.12 90,415.91
ZPOPMIN per Second 79,491.26 90,009.01
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 51,786.64 66,533.60
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 23,158.87 36,179.45
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 16,113.44 26,239.83
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 14,839.00 22,547.91
MSET (10 keys) per Second 92,936.80 88,105.73

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
PING_INLINE0.320.30
PING_MBULK0.310.29
SET0.320.29
GET0.330.29
INCR0.320.28
LPUSH0.300.29
RPUSH0.280.29
LPOP0.350.28
RPOP0.320.28
SADD0.330.29
HSET0.320.29
SPOP0.370.29
ZADD0.290.29
ZPOPMIN0.350.29
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.630.39
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.330.71
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)1.810.97
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)1.981.14
MSET (10 keys)0.380.30

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

Comparing the benchmark results from the DigitalOcean and Vultr instances, it is evident that both offer strong performance but are geared toward different use cases. The DigitalOcean Premium Intel instance, with 4 GB of RAM and 2 CPU cores, excels in handling memory-intensive tasks, as evidenced by its superior performance in Redis benchmarks, higher CPU event rates, and lower latencies in file I/O operations. It's ideal for applications requiring high RAM and fast read/write speeds. The Vultr High Frequency Intel instance, with 2 GB of RAM and 2 CPU cores, has competitive Redis throughput and CPU event rates but generally shows slightly higher latencies across various metrics, making it suitable for workloads that don't demand as much memory but still require reliable and consistent performance. Ultimately, choose DigitalOcean for memory-heavy tasks and Vultr for balanced performance where memory usage isn't a primary concern.

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.

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