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DigitalOcean Regular (1 GB) vs. Vultr High Frequency Intel (2 GB)

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Fresh benchmarks coming at ya. Today I spun up fresh instances from DigitalOcean and Vultr and ran my world famous suite of benchmarking scripts. All instances were spun up with 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 – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Last Benchmarked Sat, 01 Aug 2026 05:00:48 GMT Sat, 01 Aug 2026 05:09:02 GMT
Linux Distro Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version 7.0.0-27-generic 7.0.0-28-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 $12.00
RAM (GB) 1 2
CPU Cores 1 1
Storage (TB) 25 64
Storage Type SSD NVMe
Transfer (TB) 1 2

Head-to-head

Category winners from the latest benchmarks.

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

Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB) takes 5 of 6 categories.

CPU

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Vendor GenuineIntel GenuineIntel
Model Name DO-Regular Intel Core Processor (Skylake, IBRS, no TSX)
Clock Speed (MHz) 2,494.14 3,696.00
CPU Cache Size (KB) 4,096.00 16,384.00
BogoMips 4,988.28 7,391.99
Events per Second 815.71 1,429.28
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.98 0.67
Average Latency (ms) 1.22 0.7
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.86 3.93
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.5 0.8

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Operations per second 3,956,759.89 7,573,259.47
Mebibytes per second 3,864.02 7,395.76
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.03 0.29
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Operations per second 3,883,080.49 7,520,809.77
Mebibytes per second 3,792.07 7,344.54
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 6.51 0.33
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Reads per Second 2,180.62 4,743.82
Writes per Second 1,453.75 3,162.54
Fsyncs per Second 4,652.64 10,128.84
Read Mebibytes per Second 34.07 74.12
Written Mebibytes per Second 22.71 49.41
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.12 0.05
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.63 2.43
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.34 0.16

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 2,077.12 1,135.02
Average Latency (ms) 2,109.98 1,145.46
Maximum Latency (ms) 2,125.57 1,150.95
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2,120.76 1,149.76

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 6,111.00 10,014.00
Queries per second 61,110.00 100,140.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.13 0.91
Average Latency (ms) 1.63 1
Maximum Latency (ms) 16.53 2.96
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.3 1.14

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 3,456.00 11,181.00
Queries per second 34,560.00 111,810.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.3 0.58
Average Latency (ms) 2.89 0.89
Maximum Latency (ms) 17.71 7.24
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.57 1.16

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 2,206.00 4,056.00
Queries per second 22,060.00 40,560.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.57 1.7
Average Latency (ms) 4.53 2.46
Maximum Latency (ms) 12.36 19.4
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 6.55 3.82

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 6,940.00 20,663.00
Queries per second 69,400.00 206,630.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.52 0.32
Average Latency (ms) 1.43 0.48
Maximum Latency (ms) 22.94 5.62
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.57 0.64

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 1,084,592.00 1,870,967.00
Queries per second 10,845,920.00 18,709,670.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 506.06 227.33
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 160,315.00 229,513.00
Queries per second 1,603,150.00 2,295,130.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.06 0.04
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.76 1.03
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.1 0.05

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 3,209.00 7,697.00
Queries per second 32,090.00 76,970.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.96 0.42
Average Latency (ms) 3.11 1.3
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.53 4.34
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.57 1.67

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 5,822.00 10,600.00
Queries per second 58,220.00 106,000.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.52 0.37
Average Latency (ms) 1.71 0.94
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.33 2.67
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.86 1.25

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 9,262.00 19,067.00
Queries per second 92,620.00 190,670.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.52 0.32
Average Latency (ms) 1.08 0.52
Maximum Latency (ms) 21.4 3.86
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.82 0.73

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 8,187.00 20,161.00
Queries per second 81,870.00 201,610.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.53 0.32
Average Latency (ms) 1.22 0.5
Maximum Latency (ms) 14.67 11.21
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.18 0.67

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 79,336.00 155,087.00
Queries per second 793,360.00 1,550,870.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.13 0.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 11.85 3.89
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.34 0.09

Redis

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 44,722.72 57,937.43
PING_MBULK per Second 44,267.38 57,670.13
SET per Second 47,687.18 60,096.15
GET per Second 45,351.48 60,938.45
INCR per Second 43,535.05 58,105.75
LPUSH per Second 39,047.25 59,453.03
RPUSH per Second 37,481.26 60,827.25
LPOP per Second 40,404.04 60,864.27
RPOP per Second 38,595.14 61,312.08
SADD per Second 38,834.95 59,066.75
HSET per Second 35,932.45 59,066.75
SPOP per Second 32,000.00 59,276.82
ZADD per Second 30,750.31 58,105.75
ZPOPMIN per Second 30,854.68 59,594.76
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 24,789.29 38,986.36
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 13,390.47 22,753.13
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 8,059.32 15,583.61
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 7,098.74 14,130.28
MSET (10 keys) per Second 41,928.72 54,674.69

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
PING_INLINE0.690.52
PING_MBULK0.690.51
SET0.650.51
GET0.680.49
INCR0.710.51
LPUSH0.800.51
RPUSH0.820.50
LPOP0.780.51
RPOP0.810.50
SADD0.790.51
HSET0.860.51
SPOP0.960.50
ZADD1.010.52
ZPOPMIN1.000.50
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)1.310.81
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)2.441.44
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)3.792.06
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)4.252.35
MSET (10 keys)0.810.59

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The Vultr High Frequency Intel instance wins overall in these benchmarks, notably excelling in Redis operations with significantly higher request rates per second (rps) and lower latencies, such as 60,096.15 rps for GET compared to DigitalOcean's 45,351.48 rps, and in MySQL bulk insert operations, achieving 184,521.71 transactions per second (tps) versus DigitalOcean's 105,308.99 tps. For users prioritizing CPU-intensive or high-throughput database operations, the Vultr instance provides a compelling choice.

From the friendly human:

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Providers & pricing

DigitalOcean overview Vultr overviewDigitalOcean Regular (1 GB) pricing Vultr High Frequency Intel (2 GB) pricing

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