DigitalOcean Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) vs. Vultr Cloud Compute (2 GB, 2 Cores)

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Welcome to another round of the VPS Showdown. Today I've spun up some brand new instance from DigitalOcean and Vultr to run some benchmarks on. All instances were spun up with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and were created in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Without further ado, here's the results.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Last Benchmarked Mon, 11 May 2026 09:00:53 GMT Mon, 11 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 6.8.0-111-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 $15.00
RAM (GB) 8 2
CPU Cores 4 2
Storage (TB) 240 65
Storage Type NVMe SSD
Transfer (TB) 6 3

CPU

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (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 3,792.00
CPU Cache Size (KB) 4,096.00 16,384.00
BogoMips 4,988.28 7,583.99
Events per Second 1,080.07 1,481.60
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.85 0.63
Average Latency (ms) 0.93 0.67
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.29 1.95
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.95 0.77

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Operations per second 5,021,999.15 6,401,389.08
Mebibytes per second 4,904.30 6,251.36
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.14 0.23
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Operations per second 4,999,702.00 6,411,085.35
Mebibytes per second 4,882.52 6,260.83
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.11 0.18
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Reads per Second 8,988.52 4,345.71
Writes per Second 5,992.35 2,897.07
Fsyncs per Second 19,182.70 9,273.19
Read Mebibytes per Second 140.45 67.90
Written Mebibytes per Second 93.63 45.27
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.03 0.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.17 2.92
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.11 0.17

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Minimum Latency (ms) 540.23 214.63
Average Latency (ms) 622.37 569.72
Maximum Latency (ms) 713.32 636.55
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 707.07 634.66

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 7,980.00 8,015.00
Queries per second 79,800.00 80,150.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.06 0.92
Average Latency (ms) 1.25 1.25
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.02 5.5
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.42 1.86

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 7,835.00 8,497.00
Queries per second 78,350.00 84,970.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.82 0.76
Average Latency (ms) 1.27 1.17
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.81 3.04
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.67 1.55

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 3,701.00 3,726.00
Queries per second 37,010.00 37,260.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.95 1.78
Average Latency (ms) 2.7 2.68
Maximum Latency (ms) 7.17 5.82
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.49 3.43

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 12,453.00 15,028.00
Queries per second 124,530.00 150,280.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.48 0.41
Average Latency (ms) 0.8 0.66
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.93 2.42
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.1 0.86

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 1,637,967.00 1,696,217.00
Queries per second 16,379,670.00 16,962,170.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 332.84 283.37
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 206,728.00 201,989.00
Queries per second 2,067,280.00 2,019,890.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.03 0.03
Average Latency (ms) 0.05 0.05
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.39 0.51
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.06 0.07

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 7,303.00 8,025.00
Queries per second 73,030.00 80,250.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.51 0.35
Average Latency (ms) 1.37 1.24
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.13 3.55
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.79 2.07

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 7,384.00 8,336.00
Queries per second 73,840.00 83,360.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.38 0.4
Average Latency (ms) 1.35 1.2
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.52 4.25
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.76 2.22

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 11,764.00 13,858.00
Queries per second 117,640.00 138,580.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.48 0.42
Average Latency (ms) 0.85 0.72
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.1 6.33
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.21 0.95

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 12,673.00 14,587.00
Queries per second 126,730.00 145,870.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.47 0.4
Average Latency (ms) 0.79 0.68
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.45 11.69
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.08 0.9

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 137,732.00 129,013.00
Queries per second 1,377,320.00 1,290,130.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.03 0.03
Average Latency (ms) 0.07 0.08
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.67 2.61
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.08 0.09

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB, 2 Cores)
PING_INLINE per Second 96,432.02 78,247.26
PING_MBULK per Second 94,966.77 74,738.41
SET per Second 94,161.95 77,041.60
GET per Second 95,969.28 83,333.33
INCR per Second 96,246.39 80,971.66
LPUSH per Second 94,250.71 79,113.92
RPUSH per Second 88,967.98 77,160.49
LPOP per Second 97,370.98 81,499.59
RPOP per Second 95,328.88 82,440.23
SADD per Second 94,786.73 80,192.46
HSET per Second 99,009.90 83,612.04
SPOP per Second 100,603.62 85,034.02
ZADD per Second 95,877.28 83,263.95
ZPOPMIN per Second 99,700.90 82,987.55
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 62,814.07 55,555.56
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 30,750.31 28,851.70
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 18,580.45 19,391.12
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 16,843.52 17,211.71
MSET (10 keys) per Second 102,249.49 80,256.82

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (2 GB, 2 Cores)
PING_INLINE0.270.34
PING_MBULK0.280.35
SET0.290.34
GET0.280.32
INCR0.270.32
LPUSH0.280.34
RPUSH0.300.34
LPOP0.290.32
RPOP0.290.32
SADD0.280.32
HSET0.270.31
SPOP0.260.30
ZADD0.300.31
ZPOPMIN0.260.31
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.460.54
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)0.921.11
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)1.461.62
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)1.661.84
MSET (10 keys)0.290.38

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The DigitalOcean Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) instance demonstrates superior performance in benchmarks across various metrics compared to the Vultr Cloud Compute (2 GB, 2 Cores) instance, particularly in CPU-intensive tasks, memory operations, and file I/O. DigitalOcean's instance shows higher requests per second and lower latencies in Redis commands, better CPU and thread fairness, more efficient file I/O operations and throughput, and more responsive memory handling. This instance is ideal for applications that require high CPU power, substantial RAM, and fast I/O operations, such as large-scale web applications, data processing tasks, and high-traffic database management systems. Conversely, the Vultr instance, while competent, is best suited for less demanding applications, such as small to medium-sized websites, lightweight database services, or development environments where cost-effectiveness is a primary concern.

From the friendly human:

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