DigitalOcean Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) vs. Vultr High Performance AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)

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Welcome to another round of the VPS Showdown. Today I've spun up brand new instance from DigitalOcean and Vultr and ran some benchmarks. Each instance was running 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 (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Last Benchmarked Sat, 30 May 2026 03:00:52 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 $64.00 $18.00
RAM (GB) 8 2
CPU Cores 4 2
Storage (TB) 240 60
Storage Type NVMe NVMe
Transfer (TB) 6 4

CPU

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 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 1,067.58 4,648.14
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.86 0.2
Average Latency (ms) 0.94 0.21
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.68 1.26
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.03 0.23

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Operations per second 4,962,098.07 7,548,502.85
Mebibytes per second 4,845.80 7,371.58
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.1 0.08
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Operations per second 5,005,918.51 7,544,807.09
Mebibytes per second 4,888.59 7,367.98
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.09 0.12
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Reads per Second 9,396.04 5,114.79
Writes per Second 6,264.02 3,409.86
Fsyncs per Second 20,051.77 10,914.44
Read Mebibytes per Second 146.81 79.92
Written Mebibytes per Second 97.88 53.28
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.03 0.05
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.33 3.7
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.1 0.12

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Minimum Latency (ms) 381.71 574.03
Average Latency (ms) 452.26 637.47
Maximum Latency (ms) 498.45 663.74
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 502.20 657.93

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 7,950.00 9,622.00
Queries per second 79,500.00 96,220.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.1 0.73
Average Latency (ms) 1.26 1.04
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.52 2.22
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.42 1.12

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 7,271.00 9,585.00
Queries per second 72,710.00 95,850.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.81 0.8
Average Latency (ms) 1.37 1.04
Maximum Latency (ms) 30.71 2.18
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.76 1.32

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 3,565.00 4,686.00
Queries per second 35,650.00 46,860.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.94 1.57
Average Latency (ms) 2.8 2.13
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.67 4.26
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.75 2.52

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 13,100.00 15,965.00
Queries per second 131,000.00 159,650.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.45 0.45
Average Latency (ms) 0.76 0.62
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.99 2.23
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.06 0.74

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 1,637,967.00 3,065,092.00
Queries per second 16,379,670.00 30,650,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 312.48 208.51
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 205,531.00 217,035.00
Queries per second 2,055,310.00 2,170,350.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.03 0.02
Average Latency (ms) 0.05 0.05
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.57 0.61
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.06 0.06

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 7,411.00 14,818.00
Queries per second 74,110.00 148,180.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.43 0.24
Average Latency (ms) 1.35 0.67
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.18 1.94
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.73 0.86

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 7,339.00 14,341.00
Queries per second 73,390.00 143,410.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.38 0.27
Average Latency (ms) 1.36 0.7
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.34 1.67
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.76 0.89

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 12,452.00 14,864.00
Queries per second 124,520.00 148,640.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.47 0.47
Average Latency (ms) 0.8 0.67
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.95 2.36
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.14 0.87

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 12,648.00 15,284.00
Queries per second 126,480.00 152,840.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.46 0.46
Average Latency (ms) 0.79 0.65
Maximum Latency (ms) 9.22 1.65
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.1 0.83

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 129,049.00 151,536.00
Queries per second 1,290,490.00 1,515,360.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.03 0.02
Average Latency (ms) 0.08 0.07
Maximum Latency (ms) 6.84 4.83
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.09 0.08

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
PING_INLINE per Second 97,087.38 55,991.04
PING_MBULK per Second 105,263.16 57,903.88
SET per Second 97,465.88 57,703.40
GET per Second 94,966.77 57,703.40
INCR per Second 98,522.17 57,372.34
LPUSH per Second 102,564.10 57,836.90
RPUSH per Second 102,040.81 58,173.36
LPOP per Second 93,545.37 58,343.06
RPOP per Second 99,601.60 58,343.06
SADD per Second 103,519.66 58,241.12
HSET per Second 100,401.61 58,858.15
SPOP per Second 99,304.87 58,892.82
ZADD per Second 100,806.45 57,504.31
ZPOPMIN per Second 100,401.61 57,870.37
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 55,679.29 49,236.83
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 30,003.00 34,818.94
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 20,546.54 26,766.60
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 17,214.67 24,207.21
MSET (10 keys) per Second 93,109.87 58,548.01

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores)
PING_INLINE0.340.48
PING_MBULK0.280.44
SET0.360.45
GET0.330.45
INCR0.300.45
LPUSH0.330.44
RPUSH0.340.44
LPOP0.470.44
RPOP0.430.44
SADD0.300.44
HSET0.350.44
SPOP0.330.44
ZADD0.360.45
ZPOPMIN0.310.44
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.740.53
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.050.74
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)1.370.95
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)1.601.05
MSET (10 keys)0.310.44

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

After analyzing the benchmarks for both instances, it's clear that DigitalOcean's Premium Intel configuration outperforms Vultr's High Performance AMD in most areas, particularly in CPU and memory operations. DigitalOcean's instance shows higher rates of Redis operations per second and lower average latencies across most metrics, along with better file I/O and memory throughput. However, Vultr's AMD instance performs adequately for its lower cost and smaller footprint, especially in its baseline CPU and memory performance, but lags behind in more intensive tasks. Ideal use cases would see the DigitalOcean instance suited for CPU-intensive and I/O-heavy workloads, while the Vultr instance would be better for more budget-conscious projects that don't require the peak performance seen in the DigitalOcean setup.

From the friendly human:

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