VPS Showdown VPS Showdown

DigitalOcean Regular (1 GB) vs. Vultr Cloud Compute (1 GB)

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Welcome to another round of the VPS Showdown. Today I've got brand new instances from DigitalOcean and Vultr and ran my world famous suite of benchmarking scripts. All instances were running Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 and all resided in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Time to see who showed up today.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Last Benchmarked Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:28:23 GMT Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:30:37 GMT
Linux Distro Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version 7.0.0-27-generic 7.0.0-27-generic
MySQL Version 8.4.10-0ubuntu0.26.04.1 8.4.10-0ubuntu0.26.04.1
Redis Version 8.0.5 8.0.5
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

Head-to-head

Category winners from the latest benchmarks.

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

Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB) takes 4 of 6 categories.

CPU

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Vendor GenuineIntel GenuineIntel
Model Name DO-Regular Intel Core Processor (Broadwell, no TSX, IBRS)
Clock Speed (MHz) 2,294.60 2,394.45
CPU Cache Size (KB) 4,096.00 16,384.00
BogoMips 4,589.20 4,788.90
Events per Second 843.27 704.30
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.05 1.23
Average Latency (ms) 1.18 1.42
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.34 3.04
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.47 1.73

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Operations per second 3,368,867.41 3,595,908.88
Mebibytes per second 3,289.91 3,511.63
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.83 0.61
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Operations per second 3,248,162.62 3,455,305.83
Mebibytes per second 3,172.03 3,374.32
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.26 4.29
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Reads per Second 545.13 1,878.82
Writes per Second 363.42 1,252.51
Fsyncs per Second 1,169.66 4,014.75
Read Mebibytes per Second 8.52 29.36
Written Mebibytes per Second 5.68 19.57
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.48 0.14
Maximum Latency (ms) 78.76 11.08
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.79 0.4

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 2,099.34 2,084.67
Average Latency (ms) 2,145.49 2,093.52
Maximum Latency (ms) 2,160.95 2,098.38
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2,159.29 2,082.91

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 5,001.00 4,684.00
Queries per second 50,010.00 46,840.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.21 1.71
Average Latency (ms) 2 2.13
Maximum Latency (ms) 17.66 9.23
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.66 3.02

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 738.00 3,785.00
Queries per second 7,380.00 37,850.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 4.83 1.46
Average Latency (ms) 13.55 2.64
Maximum Latency (ms) 58.05 33.7
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 25.28 3.82

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 613.00 2,104.00
Queries per second 6,130.00 21,040.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 7.34 3.41
Average Latency (ms) 16.32 4.75
Maximum Latency (ms) 67.72 10.72
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 30.81 6.91

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 1,035.00 7,970.00
Queries per second 10,350.00 79,700.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 3.79 0.8
Average Latency (ms) 9.65 1.25
Maximum Latency (ms) 48.93 22.57
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 16.71 1.7

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 734,741.00 734,741.00
Queries per second 7,347,410.00 7,347,410.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 888.59 700.22
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 128,886.00 107,531.00
Queries per second 1,288,860.00 1,075,310.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.05 0.07
Average Latency (ms) 0.08 0.09
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.52 1.82
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.12 0.13

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 2,691.00 3,796.00
Queries per second 26,910.00 37,960.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.22 0.93
Average Latency (ms) 3.71 2.63
Maximum Latency (ms) 15.34 7.47
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5.28 3.82

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 3,433.00 5,117.00
Queries per second 34,330.00 51,170.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.79 0.67
Average Latency (ms) 2.91 1.95
Maximum Latency (ms) 7.06 5.04
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5 3.19

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 1,000.00 7,164.00
Queries per second 10,000.00 71,640.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 3.62 0.82
Average Latency (ms) 9.99 1.39
Maximum Latency (ms) 38.48 28.24
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 18.28 2.03

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 835.00 7,738.00
Queries per second 8,350.00 77,380.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 3.33 0.78
Average Latency (ms) 11.98 1.29
Maximum Latency (ms) 340.24 17.75
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 24.38 1.76

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 3,488.00 52,919.00
Queries per second 34,880.00 529,190.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.07
Average Latency (ms) 2.87 0.19
Maximum Latency (ms) 57.43 26.33
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 14.73 1.04

Redis

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 32,051.28 28,835.06
PING_MBULK per Second 29,629.63 30,778.70
SET per Second 30,571.69 28,918.45
GET per Second 26,511.13 28,669.72
INCR per Second 36,469.73 30,656.04
LPUSH per Second 26,709.40 30,911.90
RPUSH per Second 23,741.69 26,968.72
LPOP per Second 29,700.03 30,618.49
RPOP per Second 28,985.51 31,123.56
SADD per Second 29,700.03 30,358.23
HSET per Second 29,770.77 29,299.74
SPOP per Second 28,473.80 30,627.87
ZADD per Second 29,806.26 30,358.23
ZPOPMIN per Second 31,104.20 31,367.63
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 17,519.27 22,138.59
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 7,340.53 11,909.01
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 5,113.52 7,708.32
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 4,561.42 7,203.57
MSET (10 keys) per Second 30,562.35 30,312.21

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
PING_INLINE0.971.04
PING_MBULK1.030.96
SET1.031.05
GET1.181.05
INCR0.850.98
LPUSH1.180.98
RPUSH1.311.15
LPOP1.051.00
RPOP1.080.98
SADD1.040.99
HSET1.051.03
SPOP1.080.97
ZADD1.051.00
ZPOPMIN0.990.95
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)1.841.44
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)4.072.62
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)5.663.84
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)6.314.05
MSET (10 keys)1.251.07

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

DigitalOcean's Regular (1 GB) instance outperforms Vultr's Cloud Compute (1 GB) instance based on Redis benchmarks and CPU performance. Specifically, DigitalOcean's instance achieves a higher request per second (rps) for Redis commands like SET (30571.69 rps vs 28918.45 rps) and better CPU event handling (843.27 events per second vs 704.3), indicating superior overall performance. For those prioritizing high CPU-intensive tasks and Redis operations, DigitalOcean's offering provides a clear advantage.

From the friendly human:

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