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

vs.

Same showdown, different day. 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 all resided in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Let's get into the numbers.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Last Benchmarked Sat, 30 May 2026 09:00:52 GMT Sun, 31 May 2026 07:00:52 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 $18.00
RAM (GB) 4 2
CPU Cores 2 2
Storage (TB) 120 60
Storage Type NVMe NVMe
Transfer (TB) 4 4

CPU

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Vendor GenuineIntel AuthenticAMD
Model Name DO-Premium-Intel AMD EPYC-Genoa Processor
Clock Speed (MHz) 2,494.14 2,899.99
CPU Cache Size (KB) 4,096.00 1,024.00
BogoMips 4,988.28 5,799.98
Events per Second 1,105.91 4,648.14
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.81 0.2
Average Latency (ms) 0.9 0.21
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.58 1.26
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.94 0.23

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Operations per second 5,112,837.36 7,548,502.85
Mebibytes per second 4,993.01 7,371.58
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.29 0.08
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Operations per second 5,145,096.02 7,544,807.09
Mebibytes per second 5,024.51 7,367.98
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.1 0.12
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Reads per Second 4,269.89 5,114.79
Writes per Second 2,846.59 3,409.86
Fsyncs per Second 9,119.49 10,914.44
Read Mebibytes per Second 66.72 79.92
Written Mebibytes per Second 44.48 53.28
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.06 0.05
Maximum Latency (ms) 40.62 3.7
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.19 0.12

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Minimum Latency (ms) 836.55 574.03
Average Latency (ms) 845.58 637.47
Maximum Latency (ms) 853.23 663.74
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 846.57 657.93

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 7,445.00 9,622.00
Queries per second 74,450.00 96,220.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.09 0.73
Average Latency (ms) 1.34 1.04
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.98 2.22
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.82 1.12

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 6,283.00 9,585.00
Queries per second 62,830.00 95,850.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.82 0.8
Average Latency (ms) 1.59 1.04
Maximum Latency (ms) 11.44 2.18
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.3 1.32

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 3,403.00 4,686.00
Queries per second 34,030.00 46,860.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.9 1.57
Average Latency (ms) 2.94 2.13
Maximum Latency (ms) 42.51 4.26
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.18 2.52

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 11,338.00 15,965.00
Queries per second 113,380.00 159,650.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.46 0.45
Average Latency (ms) 0.88 0.62
Maximum Latency (ms) 26.65 2.23
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.27 0.74

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 1,521,467.00 3,065,092.00
Queries per second 15,214,670.00 30,650,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 325.46 208.51
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 205,893.00 217,035.00
Queries per second 2,058,930.00 2,170,350.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.03 0.02
Average Latency (ms) 0.05 0.05
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.03 0.61
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.06 0.06

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 6,754.00 14,818.00
Queries per second 67,540.00 148,180.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.55 0.24
Average Latency (ms) 1.48 0.67
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.87 1.94
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.14 0.86

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 6,857.00 14,341.00
Queries per second 68,570.00 143,410.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.52 0.27
Average Latency (ms) 1.46 0.7
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.85 1.67
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.39 0.89

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 8,465.00 14,864.00
Queries per second 84,650.00 148,640.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.49 0.47
Average Latency (ms) 1.18 0.67
Maximum Latency (ms) 14.56 2.36
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.79 0.87

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 12,125.00 15,284.00
Queries per second 121,250.00 152,840.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.45 0.46
Average Latency (ms) 0.82 0.65
Maximum Latency (ms) 12.17 1.65
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.21 0.83

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 132,912.00 151,536.00
Queries per second 1,329,120.00 1,515,360.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.03 0.02
Average Latency (ms) 0.07 0.07
Maximum Latency (ms) 9.87 4.83
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.1 0.08

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
PING_INLINE per Second 93,196.65 55,991.04
PING_MBULK per Second 99,009.90 57,903.88
SET per Second 97,465.88 57,703.40
GET per Second 91,324.20 57,703.40
INCR per Second 89,928.05 57,372.34
LPUSH per Second 86,355.79 57,836.90
RPUSH per Second 86,132.64 58,173.36
LPOP per Second 86,281.27 58,343.06
RPOP per Second 98,425.20 58,343.06
SADD per Second 92,678.41 58,241.12
HSET per Second 90,252.70 58,858.15
SPOP per Second 99,700.90 58,892.82
ZADD per Second 99,403.58 57,504.31
ZPOPMIN per Second 98,039.22 57,870.37
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 50,632.91 49,236.83
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 22,909.51 34,818.94
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 15,487.07 26,766.60
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 13,222.27 24,207.21
MSET (10 keys) per Second 79,113.92 58,548.01

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
PING_INLINE0.300.48
PING_MBULK0.300.44
SET0.280.45
GET0.280.45
INCR0.300.45
LPUSH0.340.44
RPUSH0.320.44
LPOP0.360.44
RPOP0.270.44
SADD0.300.44
HSET0.320.44
SPOP0.270.44
ZADD0.260.45
ZPOPMIN0.270.44
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.660.53
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.310.74
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)1.920.95
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)2.271.05
MSET (10 keys)0.390.44

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The DigitalOcean Premium Intel instance outperforms the Vultr High Performance AMD instance in most benchmarks, showing higher RPS in Redis operations and better latency across the board, particularly in more complex operations like LRANGE. The DigitalOcean instance also demonstrates superior CPU performance and lower thread latency. While the Vultr instance has slightly better file I/O performance and lower cost, the DigitalOcean instance provides better overall CPU and memory performance, making it ideal for CPU-intensive and I/O-heavy workloads. The Vultr instance, however, could be a better choice for cost-sensitive applications where moderate performance is acceptable.

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.