DigitalOcean Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) vs. Vultr Cloud Compute (1 GB)

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Same showdown, different day. Today I've spun up some brand new instance from DigitalOcean and Vultr and ran my world famous suite of benchmarking scripts. All instances were spun up with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and were created in the New York area (or close to it). Without further ado, here's the results.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Last Benchmarked Tue, 02 Jun 2026 06:00:52 GMT Sun, 31 May 2026 04:00:52 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 $64.00 $5.00
RAM (GB) 8 1
CPU Cores 4 1
Storage (TB) 240 25
Storage Type NVMe SSD
Transfer (TB) 6 1

CPU

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Vendor GenuineIntel GenuineIntel
Model Name DO-Premium-Intel Intel Core Processor (Broadwell, no TSX, IBRS)
Clock Speed (MHz) 1,995.31 2,394.45
CPU Cache Size (KB) 4,096.00 16,384.00
BogoMips 3,990.61 4,788.90
Events per Second 2,100.00 855.89
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.46 1.14
Average Latency (ms) 0.48 1.17
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.77 3.26
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.49 1.23

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Operations per second 4,031,036.30 4,208,440.85
Mebibytes per second 3,936.56 4,109.81
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.09 0.66
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Operations per second 4,327,248.72 4,198,602.47
Mebibytes per second 4,225.83 4,100.20
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.18 0.23
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Reads per Second 1,848.36 2,511.60
Writes per Second 1,232.24 1,674.40
Fsyncs per Second 3,943.27 5,361.38
Read Mebibytes per Second 28.88 39.24
Written Mebibytes per Second 19.25 26.16
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.14 0.1
Maximum Latency (ms) 32.73 2.8
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.83 0.3

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 496.91 1,985.30
Average Latency (ms) 678.09 1,990.99
Maximum Latency (ms) 755.25 1,996.19
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 759.88 2,009.23

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 5,172.00 5,210.00
Queries per second 51,720.00 52,100.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.28 1.74
Average Latency (ms) 1.93 1.92
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.32 13.29
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.61 2

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 2,301.00 5,112.00
Queries per second 23,010.00 51,120.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.35 1.46
Average Latency (ms) 4.34 1.95
Maximum Latency (ms) 12.64 7.48
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 7.3 2.48

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 1,495.00 2,334.00
Queries per second 14,950.00 23,340.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.89 3.59
Average Latency (ms) 6.68 4.28
Maximum Latency (ms) 19.01 13.2
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 10.46 5.09

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 3,010.00 9,427.00
Queries per second 30,100.00 94,270.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.11 0.71
Average Latency (ms) 3.32 1.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 14.62 5.65
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 6.09 1.3

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 1,201,092.00 1,026,342.00
Queries per second 12,010,920.00 10,263,420.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 566.03 502.73
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 157,927.00 117,078.00
Queries per second 1,579,270.00 1,170,780.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.07
Average Latency (ms) 0.06 0.08
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.99 7.15
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.09 0.12

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 5,434.00 5,768.00
Queries per second 54,340.00 57,680.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.45 0.58
Average Latency (ms) 1.84 1.73
Maximum Latency (ms) 14.81 5.37
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.71 2.22

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 6,582.00 6,308.00
Queries per second 65,820.00 63,080.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.57 0.36
Average Latency (ms) 1.52 1.58
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.15 3.56
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.66 2.03

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 3,033.00 8,507.00
Queries per second 30,330.00 85,070.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1 0.75
Average Latency (ms) 3.29 1.17
Maximum Latency (ms) 67.75 17.31
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5.99 1.64

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 3,268.00 9,044.00
Queries per second 32,680.00 90,440.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.03 0.7
Average Latency (ms) 3.06 1.1
Maximum Latency (ms) 11.49 11.45
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5.57 1.34

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 24,924.00 62,368.00
Queries per second 249,240.00 623,680.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.07
Average Latency (ms) 0.4 0.16
Maximum Latency (ms) 26.64 8.24
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.81 0.97

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 93,545.37 34,916.20
PING_MBULK per Second 87,796.30 34,626.04
SET per Second 93,457.94 34,904.02
GET per Second 94,250.71 35,460.99
INCR per Second 85,106.38 36,603.22
LPUSH per Second 95,057.03 35,855.14
RPUSH per Second 86,505.19 35,997.12
LPOP per Second 89,285.71 35,587.19
RPOP per Second 100,100.10 36,075.04
SADD per Second 90,661.83 33,818.06
HSET per Second 90,415.91 36,127.17
SPOP per Second 96,432.02 36,363.64
ZADD per Second 97,751.71 35,842.29
ZPOPMIN per Second 97,751.71 36,509.68
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 58,997.05 24,348.67
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 26,191.72 13,199.58
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 15,961.69 9,087.60
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 14,390.56 8,021.18
MSET (10 keys) per Second 73,152.89 33,875.34

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
PING_INLINE0.280.93
PING_MBULK0.310.94
SET0.310.94
GET0.280.92
INCR0.310.90
LPUSH0.290.92
RPUSH0.320.91
LPOP0.320.93
RPOP0.270.92
SADD0.320.99
HSET0.290.91
SPOP0.300.90
ZADD0.310.92
ZPOPMIN0.280.90
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.461.38
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.052.55
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)2.043.78
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)2.124.25
MSET (10 keys)0.491.02

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The DigitalOcean Premium Intel instance demonstrates superior benchmark performance with higher throughput, lower latency, and greater concurrency across CPU, memory, file I/O, and database operations compared to the Vultr Cloud Compute instance. DigitalOcean's instance excels in CPU-intensive and I/O-heavy workloads due to its higher CPU cores, RAM, and NVMe storage. Meanwhile, Vultr's instance, while adequate for lighter tasks, struggles with more demanding operations, reflecting its single core and lower memory capacity. For developers and sysadmins seeking high performance for web servers, database backends, and other resource-intensive applications, DigitalOcean's instance is highly recommended. Conversely, Vultr's instance could be suitable for less demanding use cases such as development environments, small web applications, or low-traffic services.

From the friendly human:

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