DigitalOcean Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) vs. Vultr High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Welcome to another round of the VPS Showdown. 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). Enough talk. Here's the data.
Overview
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) | Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Last Benchmarked | Tue, 02 Jun 2026 06:00:52 GMT | Mon, 01 Jun 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 | $12.00 |
| RAM (GB) | 8 | 2 |
| CPU Cores | 4 | 1 |
| Storage (TB) | 240 | 50 |
| Storage Type | NVMe | NVMe |
| Transfer (TB) | 6 | 3 |
CPU
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) | Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | GenuineIntel | GenuineIntel |
| Model Name | DO-Premium-Intel | Intel Xeon Processor (Cascadelake) |
| Clock Speed (MHz) | 1,995.31 | 2,893.17 |
| CPU Cache Size (KB) | 4,096.00 | 16,384.00 |
| BogoMips | 3,990.61 | 5,786.33 |
| Events per Second | 2,100.00 | 1,048.47 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.46 | 0.83 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.48 | 0.95 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 0.77 | 5.25 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0.49 | 1.21 |
Memory
Memory Read
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) | Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Operations per second | 4,031,036.30 | 4,854,174.96 |
| Mebibytes per second | 3,936.56 | 4,740.41 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 0.09 | 2.23 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
Memory Write
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) | Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Operations per second | 4,327,248.72 | 4,942,528.76 |
| Mebibytes per second | 4,225.83 | 4,826.69 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 0.18 | 4.94 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
File I/O
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) | Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Reads per Second | 1,848.36 | 4,132.87 |
| Writes per Second | 1,232.24 | 2,755.21 |
| Fsyncs per Second | 3,943.27 | 8,825.96 |
| Read Mebibytes per Second | 28.88 | 64.58 |
| Written Mebibytes per Second | 19.25 | 43.05 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.14 | 0.06 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 32.73 | 2.15 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0.83 | 0.19 |
Mutex
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) | Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 496.91 | 1,776.90 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 678.09 | 1,797.61 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 755.25 | 1,811.62 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 759.88 | 1,803.47 |
MySQL
MySQL Read-only
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) | Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 5,172.00 | 7,971.00 |
| Queries per second | 51,720.00 | 79,710.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 1.28 | 1.06 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 1.93 | 1.25 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 8.32 | 4.3 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 2.61 | 1.58 |
MySQL Write-only
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) | Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 2,301.00 | 7,352.00 |
| Queries per second | 23,010.00 | 73,520.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 1.35 | 0.83 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 4.34 | 1.36 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 12.64 | 4.44 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 7.3 | 2 |
MySQL Read/Write
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) | Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 1,495.00 | 3,189.00 |
| Queries per second | 14,950.00 | 31,890.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 2.89 | 2.31 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 6.68 | 3.13 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 19.01 | 15.9 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 10.46 | 4.18 |
MySQL INSERT
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) | Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 3,010.00 | 13,921.00 |
| Queries per second | 30,100.00 | 139,210.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 1.11 | 0.43 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 3.32 | 0.71 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 14.62 | 3.82 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 6.09 | 0.97 |
MySQL Bulk INSERT
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) | Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 1,201,092.00 | 1,230,217.00 |
| Queries per second | 12,010,920.00 | 12,302,170.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.01 | 0.01 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 566.03 | 357.55 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
MySQL SELECT
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) | Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 157,927.00 | 207,049.00 |
| Queries per second | 1,579,270.00 | 2,070,490.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.04 | 0.04 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.06 | 0.05 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 2.99 | 2.95 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0.09 | 0.07 |
MySQL SELECT (Random Points)
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) | Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 5,434.00 | 6,025.00 |
| Queries per second | 54,340.00 | 60,250.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.45 | 0.49 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 1.84 | 1.66 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 14.81 | 4.45 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 2.71 | 2.35 |
MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) | Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 6,582.00 | 7,229.00 |
| Queries per second | 65,820.00 | 72,290.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.57 | 0.53 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 1.52 | 1.38 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 5.15 | 5.38 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 2.66 | 1.96 |
MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) | Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 3,033.00 | 12,590.00 |
| Queries per second | 30,330.00 | 125,900.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 1 | 0.44 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 3.29 | 0.79 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 67.75 | 6.03 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 5.99 | 1.23 |
MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) | Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 3,268.00 | 13,129.00 |
| Queries per second | 32,680.00 | 131,290.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 1.03 | 0.43 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 3.06 | 0.76 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 11.49 | 3.97 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 5.57 | 1.08 |
MySQL DELETE
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) | Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 24,924.00 | 111,517.00 |
| Queries per second | 249,240.00 | 1,115,170.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.04 | 0.04 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.4 | 0.09 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 26.64 | 10.16 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 2.81 | 0.18 |
Redis
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) | Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| PING_INLINE per Second | 93,545.37 | 43,252.59 |
| PING_MBULK per Second | 87,796.30 | 43,917.44 |
| SET per Second | 93,457.94 | 44,189.13 |
| GET per Second | 94,250.71 | 45,228.40 |
| INCR per Second | 85,106.38 | 44,662.79 |
| LPUSH per Second | 95,057.03 | 42,936.88 |
| RPUSH per Second | 86,505.19 | 42,955.32 |
| LPOP per Second | 89,285.71 | 39,339.10 |
| RPOP per Second | 100,100.10 | 43,572.98 |
| SADD per Second | 90,661.83 | 43,878.89 |
| HSET per Second | 90,415.91 | 43,010.75 |
| SPOP per Second | 96,432.02 | 43,497.17 |
| ZADD per Second | 97,751.71 | 42,034.47 |
| ZPOPMIN per Second | 97,751.71 | 44,052.86 |
| LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second | 58,997.05 | 25,893.32 |
| LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second | 26,191.72 | 13,837.00 |
| LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second | 15,961.69 | 8,880.99 |
| LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second | 14,390.56 | 8,015.39 |
| MSET (10 keys) per Second | 73,152.89 | 38,865.14 |
Redis Average Latency (ms)
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) | Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| PING_INLINE | 0.28 | 0.75 |
| PING_MBULK | 0.31 | 0.75 |
| SET | 0.31 | 0.75 |
| GET | 0.28 | 0.73 |
| INCR | 0.31 | 0.73 |
| LPUSH | 0.29 | 0.76 |
| RPUSH | 0.32 | 0.77 |
| LPOP | 0.32 | 0.86 |
| RPOP | 0.27 | 0.76 |
| SADD | 0.32 | 0.74 |
| HSET | 0.29 | 0.76 |
| SPOP | 0.30 | 0.75 |
| ZADD | 0.31 | 0.78 |
| ZPOPMIN | 0.28 | 0.74 |
| LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) | 0.46 | 1.30 |
| LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) | 1.05 | 2.56 |
| LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) | 2.04 | 3.99 |
| LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) | 2.12 | 4.43 |
| MSET (10 keys) | 0.49 | 0.87 |
Conclusion
From the friendly robots:
After analyzing the benchmark results for both the DigitalOcean Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) and the Vultr High Performance Intel (2 GB), it is clear that the DigitalOcean instance outperforms the Vultr instance in terms of overall computational power and throughput, especially evident in Redis benchmarks where the DigitalOcean instance consistently shows higher RPS (requests per second) and lower latency metrics. DigitalOcean's instance also excels in memory operations and file I/O, which points to better overall performance for memory-intensive and I/O-heavy workloads. However, the Vultr instance, while showing lower performance in most areas, has competitive file I/O metrics and is notably more cost-effective. Ideal use cases for DigitalOcean's instance would be for CPU-intensive, memory-demanding, or high-throughput applications, whereas the Vultr instance might be more suitable for applications requiring a balance of moderate performance and lower costs.
From the friendly human:
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