DigitalOcean Regular (1 GB) vs. Vultr Cloud Compute (1 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 Vultr to run some benchmarks on. Each instance was running Ubuntu 24.04 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) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Last Benchmarked Tue, 07 Apr 2026 15:00:53 GMT Wed, 08 Apr 2026 21:00:52 GMT
Linux Distro Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version 6.8.0-71-generic 6.8.0-107-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 $6.00 $5.00
RAM (GB) 1 1
CPU Cores 1 1
Storage (TB) 25 25
Storage Type SSD SSD
Transfer (TB) 1 1

CPU

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Vendor GenuineIntel GenuineIntel
Model Name DO-Regular Intel Core Processor (Haswell, no TSX, IBRS)
Clock Speed (MHz) 2,294.61 2,400.00
CPU Cache Size (KB) 4,096.00 16,384.00
BogoMips 4,589.21 4,799.99
Events per Second 413.49 820.77
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.98 1
Average Latency (ms) 2.41 1.22
Maximum Latency (ms) 6.72 3.71
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.96 1.32

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Operations per second 2,931,810.57 4,183,460.82
Mebibytes per second 2,863.10 4,085.41
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.41 0.32
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Operations per second 3,364,154.34 4,091,149.16
Mebibytes per second 3,285.31 3,995.26
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.03 0.91
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Reads per Second 1,031.43 2,036.96
Writes per Second 687.62 1,357.97
Fsyncs per Second 2,211.89 4,346.01
Read Mebibytes per Second 16.12 31.83
Written Mebibytes per Second 10.74 21.22
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.25 0.13
Maximum Latency (ms) 124.42 4.89
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.64 0.3

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 2,085.64 1,927.10
Average Latency (ms) 2,117.30 1,939.45
Maximum Latency (ms) 2,126.74 1,950.93
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2,120.76 1,938.16

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 4,188.00 5,023.00
Queries per second 41,880.00 50,230.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.34 1.72
Average Latency (ms) 2.38 1.99
Maximum Latency (ms) 13.68 6.42
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.76 2.18

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 898.00 3,626.00
Queries per second 8,980.00 36,260.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 3.87 1.75
Average Latency (ms) 11.12 2.76
Maximum Latency (ms) 199.35 26.81
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 22.28 4.41

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 977.00 1,959.00
Queries per second 9,770.00 19,590.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 6.44 4.12
Average Latency (ms) 10.23 5.1
Maximum Latency (ms) 46.69 10.97
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 15.27 6.21

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 2,413.00 6,524.00
Queries per second 24,130.00 65,240.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.28 1.08
Average Latency (ms) 4.14 1.53
Maximum Latency (ms) 161.12 15.83
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 6.79 2.03

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 767,507.00 996,869.00
Queries per second 7,675,070.00 9,968,690.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 701.42 477.16
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 129,998.00 104,020.00
Queries per second 1,299,980.00 1,040,200.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.07
Average Latency (ms) 0.08 0.1
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.05 2.02
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.11 0.14

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 2,875.00 5,526.00
Queries per second 28,750.00 55,260.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.27 0.63
Average Latency (ms) 3.47 1.81
Maximum Latency (ms) 24.28 6.77
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.74 2.35

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 2,894.00 6,273.00
Queries per second 28,940.00 62,730.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.12 0.5
Average Latency (ms) 3.45 1.59
Maximum Latency (ms) 12.05 3.53
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.91 2.07

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 1,665.00 6,371.00
Queries per second 16,650.00 63,710.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.62 1.03
Average Latency (ms) 6 1.57
Maximum Latency (ms) 45.51 7.68
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 11.65 2.14

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 1,754.00 6,541.00
Queries per second 17,540.00 65,410.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.21 0.91
Average Latency (ms) 5.7 1.53
Maximum Latency (ms) 163.84 24.84
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 11.04 1.96

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 15,267.00 43,573.00
Queries per second 152,670.00 435,730.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.07
Average Latency (ms) 0.65 0.23
Maximum Latency (ms) 31.8 7.55
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.62 1.42

Redis

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 29,577.05 35,050.82
PING_MBULK per Second 36,496.35 33,534.54
SET per Second 32,164.68 36,010.08
GET per Second 36,589.83 35,149.38
INCR per Second 36,390.10 36,523.01
LPUSH per Second 35,001.75 37,369.21
RPUSH per Second 32,552.08 38,774.72
LPOP per Second 34,470.87 36,982.25
RPOP per Second 31,575.62 36,724.20
SADD per Second 28,546.96 36,563.07
HSET per Second 29,673.59 32,701.11
SPOP per Second 31,705.77 36,205.65
ZADD per Second 31,585.60 37,467.22
ZPOPMIN per Second 33,255.74 37,495.31
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 13,048.02 24,801.59
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 6,657.35 13,208.29
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 4,256.59 9,684.29
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 3,682.29 7,718.43
MSET (10 keys) per Second 19,047.62 33,602.15

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
PING_INLINE1.100.93
PING_MBULK0.900.96
SET1.030.91
GET0.910.92
INCR0.910.90
LPUSH0.950.88
RPUSH1.010.85
LPOP0.980.89
RPOP1.060.90
SADD1.130.89
HSET1.091.01
SPOP1.030.89
ZADD1.040.88
ZPOPMIN0.980.87
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)2.761.35
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)5.262.57
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)8.103.54
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)9.214.41
MSET (10 keys)2.011.02

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

Upon analyzing the benchmark results of the DigitalOcean and Vultr instances, it's evident that Vultr's Cloud Compute instance outpaces DigitalOcean's Regular (1 GB) in most metrics, particularly in Redis operations where higher RPS rates and lower latencies are observed, suggesting more efficient memory and CPU usage. Vultr also demonstrates superior performance in file I/O operations, with higher throughput and lower latencies. However, DigitalOcean maintains competitive performance in CPU benchmarks and has better performance in memory operations, though both are highly capable. The Vultr instance is more suited for workloads that benefit from higher throughput and lower latency in I/O-heavy and CPU-intensive tasks, while the DigitalOcean instance may be preferable for applications requiring stable, reliable memory performance.

From the friendly human:

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