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

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Same showdown, different day. Today I've got brand new instances from DigitalOcean to run some benchmarks on. All instances were running Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 and all resided in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Enough talk. Here's the data.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Last Benchmarked Thu, 01 Oct 2026 05:00:49 GMT Thu, 01 Oct 2026 05:03:47 GMT
Linux Distro Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version 7.0.0-31-generic 7.0.0-31-generic
MySQL Version 8.4.11-0ubuntu0.26.04.1 8.4.11-0ubuntu0.26.04.1
Redis Version 8.0.5 8.0.5
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

Head-to-head

Category winners from the latest benchmarks.

CategoryWinner
CPU (events/sec)DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Memory (read MiB/s)DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Disk I/O (MiB/s)DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
MySQL (read/write tps)DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Redis (GET/sec)DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Value (CPU events per $/mo)DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) takes 5 of 6 categories.

CPU

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Vendor GenuineIntel GenuineIntel
Model Name DO-Regular DO-Regular
Clock Speed (MHz) 2,494.14 2,294.61
CPU Cache Size (KB) 4,096.00 4,096.00
BogoMips 4,988.27 4,589.21
Events per Second 705.37 370.52
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.98 1.05
Average Latency (ms) 1.41 2.69
Maximum Latency (ms) 12.76 14.47
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2 4.57

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Operations per second 3,663,208.77 1,545,738.03
Mebibytes per second 3,577.35 1,509.51
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.47 40.5
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Operations per second 3,890,887.47 2,729,753.92
Mebibytes per second 3,799.69 2,665.78
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.33 149.26
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Reads per Second 2,194.30 475.95
Writes per Second 1,462.87 317.30
Fsyncs per Second 4,688.57 1,017.81
Read Mebibytes per Second 34.29 7.44
Written Mebibytes per Second 22.86 4.96
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.12 0.55
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.7 115.24
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.32 1.08

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 2,352.19 2,875.76
Average Latency (ms) 2,382.76 2,899.88
Maximum Latency (ms) 2,393.79 2,919.44
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2,405.65 2,932.60

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Transactions per second 4,593.00 4,374.00
Queries per second 45,930.00 43,740.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.29 1.26
Average Latency (ms) 2.17 2.28
Maximum Latency (ms) 13.82 40.05
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.02 2.81

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Transactions per second 3,486.00 273.00
Queries per second 34,860.00 2,730.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.26 4.19
Average Latency (ms) 2.86 36.89
Maximum Latency (ms) 33.41 358.42
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.33 130.13

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Transactions per second 1,761.00 258.00
Queries per second 17,610.00 2,580.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 3.36 6.26
Average Latency (ms) 5.67 38.75
Maximum Latency (ms) 16.69 259.21
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 7.98 123.28

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Transactions per second 6,877.00 796.00
Queries per second 68,770.00 7,960.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.65 2.03
Average Latency (ms) 1.45 12.55
Maximum Latency (ms) 9.48 223.21
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.35 63.32

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Transactions per second 833,039.00 374,315.00
Queries per second 8,330,390.00 3,743,150.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.03
Maximum Latency (ms) 670.02 3489.66
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Transactions per second 122,209.00 124,757.00
Queries per second 1,222,090.00 1,247,570.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.08 0.08
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.73 168.4
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.14 0.12

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Transactions per second 3,294.00 2,721.00
Queries per second 32,940.00 27,210.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.13 0.36
Average Latency (ms) 3.03 3.67
Maximum Latency (ms) 17.77 34.76
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.65 5

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Transactions per second 5,143.00 2,783.00
Queries per second 51,430.00 27,830.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.52 0.51
Average Latency (ms) 1.94 3.59
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.8 10.87
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.02 5.28

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Transactions per second 5,821.00 454.00
Queries per second 58,210.00 4,540.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.62 2.46
Average Latency (ms) 1.71 22.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 21.71 345.88
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.3 102.97

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Transactions per second 7,391.00 263.00
Queries per second 73,910.00 2,630.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.57 2.54
Average Latency (ms) 1.35 38
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.09 442.22
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.14 110.66

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Transactions per second 51,002.00 1,343.00
Queries per second 510,020.00 13,430.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.06
Average Latency (ms) 0.19 7.46
Maximum Latency (ms) 9.61 266.15
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.12 34.33

Redis

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 31,026.99 35,701.54
PING_MBULK per Second 34,530.39 40,338.84
SET per Second 35,945.36 37,119.52
GET per Second 34,293.55 38,343.56
INCR per Second 23,820.87 36,710.72
LPUSH per Second 30,931.02 35,637.92
RPUSH per Second 33,014.20 34,891.84
LPOP per Second 30,553.01 33,400.13
RPOP per Second 34,459.00 32,615.79
SADD per Second 37,285.61 25,246.15
HSET per Second 29,002.32 28,645.09
SPOP per Second 32,195.75 30,138.64
ZADD per Second 30,562.35 31,735.96
ZPOPMIN per Second 29,342.72 34,770.52
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 20,024.03 17,424.64
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 11,069.29 7,678.13
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 6,976.42 5,190.49
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 6,141.75 4,344.61
MSET (10 keys) per Second 27,609.06 27,434.84

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
PING_INLINE0.990.87
PING_MBULK0.880.75
SET0.860.84
GET0.900.81
INCR1.330.85
LPUSH1.000.88
RPUSH0.940.90
LPOP1.030.94
RPOP0.910.96
SADD0.831.23
HSET1.071.09
SPOP0.951.03
ZADD1.010.98
ZPOPMIN1.060.89
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)1.621.84
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)2.903.92
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)4.305.58
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)4.796.57
MSET (10 keys)1.251.39

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The DigitalOcean Regular (2 GB) instance wins overall, primarily due to superior Redis benchmarks, where it reaches a remarkable 51519.84 RPS for SADD commands compared to the Regular (1 GB) instance's 37355.25 RPS. For use cases that demand high throughput for Redis operations, this instance would be more suitable. However, if budget is a primary concern, the Regular (1 GB) instance provides a cost-effective solution with respectable performance for less demanding tasks.

From the friendly human:

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