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

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My friend, I'm so glad you're here! Today I've spun up some brand new instance from DigitalOcean and ran some benchmarks. 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 – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Last Benchmarked Sun, 24 May 2026 06:00:51 GMT Fri, 22 May 2026 05:00:52 GMT
Linux Distro Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version 6.8.0-71-generic 6.8.0-71-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) 2,494.17 2,494.15
CPU Cache Size (KB) 4,096.00 4,096.00
BogoMips 4,988.33 4,988.29
Events per Second 544.64 398.12
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.91 0.92
Average Latency (ms) 1.83 2.5
Maximum Latency (ms) 6.05 22.31
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.3 4.1

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Operations per second 3,884,147.58 2,591,826.91
Mebibytes per second 3,793.11 2,531.08
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.21 4.57
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Operations per second 3,855,342.89 3,638,844.12
Mebibytes per second 3,764.98 3,553.56
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.09 12.23
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Reads per Second 1,941.53 2,346.24
Writes per Second 1,294.36 1,564.09
Fsyncs per Second 4,148.23 5,009.57
Read Mebibytes per Second 30.34 36.66
Written Mebibytes per Second 20.22 24.44
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.13 0.11
Maximum Latency (ms) 14.04 49.76
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.37 0.3

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 2,442.65 2,712.08
Average Latency (ms) 2,474.33 2,762.77
Maximum Latency (ms) 2,494.37 2,780.50
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2,493.86 2,778.39

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Transactions per second 5,075.00 4,679.00
Queries per second 50,750.00 46,790.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.28 1.22
Average Latency (ms) 1.97 2.13
Maximum Latency (ms) 7.01 6.89
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.52 2.66

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Transactions per second 3,624.00 3,197.00
Queries per second 36,240.00 31,970.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.32 1.31
Average Latency (ms) 2.75 3.13
Maximum Latency (ms) 14.77 29.45
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.25 5.67

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Transactions per second 1,703.00 1,556.00
Queries per second 17,030.00 15,560.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 3.52 3.18
Average Latency (ms) 5.86 6.42
Maximum Latency (ms) 19.13 33.39
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 7.98 10.46

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Transactions per second 6,947.00 5,648.00
Queries per second 69,470.00 56,480.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.67 0.54
Average Latency (ms) 1.43 1.76
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.58 13.01
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.11 3.19

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Transactions per second 898,571.00 996,869.00
Queries per second 8,985,710.00 9,968,690.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 604.32 525.61
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Transactions per second 134,023.00 124,852.00
Queries per second 1,340,230.00 1,248,520.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.07 0.08
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.96 9.62
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.12 0.12

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Transactions per second 3,981.00 4,252.00
Queries per second 39,810.00 42,520.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.66 0.74
Average Latency (ms) 2.51 2.35
Maximum Latency (ms) 9.61 9.55
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.55 3.36

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Transactions per second 4,240.00 4,873.00
Queries per second 42,400.00 48,730.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.76 0.74
Average Latency (ms) 2.35 2.05
Maximum Latency (ms) 6.72 4.76
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.36 3.02

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Transactions per second 5,672.00 4,048.00
Queries per second 56,720.00 40,480.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.73 0.82
Average Latency (ms) 1.76 2.47
Maximum Latency (ms) 15.81 31.37
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.97 4.91

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Transactions per second 6,657.00 5,847.00
Queries per second 66,570.00 58,470.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.61 0.59
Average Latency (ms) 1.5 1.71
Maximum Latency (ms) 11.94 74.78
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.3 2.97

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Transactions per second 57,603.00 52,118.00
Queries per second 576,030.00 521,180.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.17 0.19
Maximum Latency (ms) 18.88 21.92
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.04 1.12

Redis

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 36,496.35 42,918.46
PING_MBULK per Second 39,447.73 42,535.09
SET per Second 38,804.81 38,124.29
GET per Second 37,835.79 38,729.67
INCR per Second 38,491.14 40,144.52
LPUSH per Second 40,617.39 34,164.67
RPUSH per Second 35,893.75 34,106.41
LPOP per Second 37,664.79 38,986.36
RPOP per Second 38,774.72 35,473.57
SADD per Second 38,182.51 36,576.45
HSET per Second 34,352.46 32,195.75
SPOP per Second 34,246.57 34,952.81
ZADD per Second 36,954.91 32,102.73
ZPOPMIN per Second 40,338.84 32,404.41
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 20,593.08 17,787.26
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 8,546.28 9,151.64
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 5,492.39 6,067.22
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 5,337.03 4,847.31
MSET (10 keys) per Second 32,362.46 34,566.20

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
PING_INLINE0.910.79
PING_MBULK0.840.79
SET0.870.86
GET0.880.85
INCR0.870.83
LPUSH0.830.97
RPUSH0.930.97
LPOP0.900.87
RPOP0.870.94
SADD0.880.90
HSET0.971.03
SPOP0.960.93
ZADD0.911.03
ZPOPMIN0.831.00
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)1.752.02
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)4.183.97
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)6.485.94
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)6.657.35
MSET (10 keys)1.091.03

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

Upon examining the benchmark data, the DigitalOcean Regular (2 GB) instance provides slightly better performance across most metrics compared to the Regular (1 GB) instance. The (2 GB) variant shows higher requests per second in Redis benchmarks and better throughput for file I/O operations, indicating enhanced memory bandwidth and I/O capabilities, which are crucial for I/O-intensive applications. The CPU metrics show similar trends with slightly lower latency and higher throughput for the (2 GB) instance, though the difference is marginal. Given the extra RAM and comparable CPU performance, the (2 GB) instance is better suited for applications that benefit from higher memory, such as database servers or applications requiring high throughput and low latency, whereas the (1 GB) instance might suffice for less demanding tasks with lighter memory and CPU requirements.

From the friendly human:

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