DigitalOcean Regular (1 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Regular (2 GB)

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New day, new benchmarks. Today I've spun up some brand new instance from DigitalOcean and ran some benchmarks. Each instance was running 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 – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Last Benchmarked Tue, 07 Apr 2026 15:00:53 GMT Wed, 08 Apr 2026 20:00:53 GMT
Linux Distro Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version 6.8.0-71-generic 6.8.0-71-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 New York, NY
Monthly Price $6.00 $12.00
RAM (GB) 1 2
CPU Cores 1 1
Storage (TB) 25 50
Storage Type SSD SSD
Transfer (TB) 1 2

CPU

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Vendor GenuineIntel GenuineIntel
Model Name DO-Regular DO-Regular
Clock Speed (MHz) 2,294.61 2,294.60
CPU Cache Size (KB) 4,096.00 4,096.00
BogoMips 4,589.21 4,589.20
Events per Second 413.49 388.92
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.98 0.98
Average Latency (ms) 2.41 2.56
Maximum Latency (ms) 6.72 19.9
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.96 4.33

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Operations per second 2,931,810.57 1,522,058.57
Mebibytes per second 2,863.10 1,486.39
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.41 4.04
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Operations per second 3,364,154.34 1,534,508.04
Mebibytes per second 3,285.31 1,498.54
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.03 4.04
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Reads per Second 1,031.43 1,454.00
Writes per Second 687.62 969.33
Fsyncs per Second 2,211.89 3,102.51
Read Mebibytes per Second 16.12 22.72
Written Mebibytes per Second 10.74 15.15
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.25 0.18
Maximum Latency (ms) 124.42 30.23
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.64 0.57

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 2,085.64 2,869.66
Average Latency (ms) 2,117.30 2,898.10
Maximum Latency (ms) 2,126.74 2,917.10
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2,120.76 2,932.60

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Transactions per second 4,188.00 4,322.00
Queries per second 41,880.00 43,220.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.34 1.28
Average Latency (ms) 2.38 2.31
Maximum Latency (ms) 13.68 7.14
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.76 2.81

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Transactions per second 898.00 2,049.00
Queries per second 8,980.00 20,490.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 3.87 2.64
Average Latency (ms) 11.12 4.87
Maximum Latency (ms) 199.35 82.76
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 22.28 6.91

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Transactions per second 977.00 982.00
Queries per second 9,770.00 9,820.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 6.44 5.17
Average Latency (ms) 10.23 10.17
Maximum Latency (ms) 46.69 165.11
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 15.27 14.46

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Transactions per second 2,413.00 2,738.00
Queries per second 24,130.00 27,380.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.28 2.03
Average Latency (ms) 4.14 3.64
Maximum Latency (ms) 161.12 32.11
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 6.79 5.77

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Transactions per second 767,507.00 701,975.00
Queries per second 7,675,070.00 7,019,750.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 701.42 772.28
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Transactions per second 129,998.00 101,726.00
Queries per second 1,299,980.00 1,017,260.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.08 0.1
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.05 61.49
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.11 0.13

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Transactions per second 2,875.00 3,579.00
Queries per second 28,750.00 35,790.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.27 0.64
Average Latency (ms) 3.47 2.79
Maximum Latency (ms) 24.28 45.42
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.74 3.82

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Transactions per second 2,894.00 3,209.00
Queries per second 28,940.00 32,090.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.12 0.59
Average Latency (ms) 3.45 3.11
Maximum Latency (ms) 12.05 7.09
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.91 4.82

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Transactions per second 1,665.00 2,716.00
Queries per second 16,650.00 27,160.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.62 2.02
Average Latency (ms) 6 3.68
Maximum Latency (ms) 45.51 40.21
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 11.65 5.37

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Transactions per second 1,754.00 2,791.00
Queries per second 17,540.00 27,910.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.21 1.94
Average Latency (ms) 5.7 3.58
Maximum Latency (ms) 163.84 64.89
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 11.04 5.28

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Transactions per second 15,267.00 12,516.00
Queries per second 152,670.00 125,160.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.65 0.8
Maximum Latency (ms) 31.8 49.7
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.62 4.18

Redis

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 29,577.05 35,752.59
PING_MBULK per Second 36,496.35 37,188.55
SET per Second 32,164.68 39,432.18
GET per Second 36,589.83 41,169.21
INCR per Second 36,390.10 40,032.03
LPUSH per Second 35,001.75 40,650.41
RPUSH per Second 32,552.08 40,783.04
LPOP per Second 34,470.87 36,697.25
RPOP per Second 31,575.62 35,423.31
SADD per Second 28,546.96 35,855.14
HSET per Second 29,673.59 40,290.09
SPOP per Second 31,705.77 40,387.72
ZADD per Second 31,585.60 34,435.26
ZPOPMIN per Second 33,255.74 36,231.88
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 13,048.02 14,455.04
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 6,657.35 6,798.56
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 4,256.59 4,619.36
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 3,682.29 4,027.71
MSET (10 keys) per Second 19,047.62 25,846.47

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
PING_INLINE1.100.92
PING_MBULK0.900.88
SET1.030.85
GET0.910.81
INCR0.910.83
LPUSH0.950.83
RPUSH1.010.82
LPOP0.980.92
RPOP1.060.95
SADD1.130.93
HSET1.090.83
SPOP1.030.82
ZADD1.040.97
ZPOPMIN0.980.91
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)2.762.52
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)5.265.21
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)8.107.54
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)9.218.57
MSET (10 keys)2.011.39

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

Both DigitalOcean instances show strong performance in their respective benchmarks, but the "Regular (2 GB)" instance exhibits significantly higher performance metrics across all categories compared to the "Regular (1 GB)" instance, particularly in CPU, Redis, and MySQL workloads, which are bolstered by the additional RAM. While the "Regular (1 GB)" instance is more cost-effective, the "Regular (2 GB)" instance provides superior performance and scalability for CPU-intensive and I/O-heavy workloads, making it ideal for applications requiring higher throughput and lower latency. For cost-sensitive users with less demanding applications, the "Regular (1 GB)" is a practical choice.

From the friendly human:

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