VPS Showdown VPS Showdown

DigitalOcean Regular (1 GB) vs. Vultr High Performance AMD (2 GB)

vs.

Same showdown, different day. Today I've got brand new instances from DigitalOcean and Vultr and did some benchmarking. Each instance was spun up with Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 and all resided in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Without further ado, here's the results.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Last Benchmarked Thu, 01 Oct 2026 05:00:49 GMT Tue, 01 Sep 2026 05:12:02 GMT
Linux Distro Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version 7.0.0-31-generic 7.0.0-29-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 Newark, NJ
Monthly Price $6.00 $12.00
RAM (GB) 1 2
CPU Cores 1 1
Storage (TB) 25 50
Storage Type SSD NVMe
Transfer (TB) 1 3

Head-to-head

Category winners from the latest benchmarks.

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

Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB) takes 6 of 6 categories.

CPU

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Vendor GenuineIntel AuthenticAMD
Model Name DO-Regular AMD EPYC-Milan Processor
Clock Speed (MHz) 2,494.14 2,900.00
CPU Cache Size (KB) 4,096.00 512.00
BogoMips 4,988.27 5,800.00
Events per Second 705.37 4,236.14
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.98 0.22
Average Latency (ms) 1.41 0.24
Maximum Latency (ms) 12.76 2.34
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2 0.26

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Operations per second 3,663,208.77 7,367,539.15
Mebibytes per second 3,577.35 7,194.86
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.47 0.51
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Operations per second 3,890,887.47 7,232,726.42
Mebibytes per second 3,799.69 7,063.21
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.33 0.81
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Reads per Second 2,194.30 4,910.99
Writes per Second 1,462.87 3,273.99
Fsyncs per Second 4,688.57 10,478.27
Read Mebibytes per Second 34.29 76.73
Written Mebibytes per Second 22.86 51.16
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.12 0.05
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.7 6.86
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.32 0.12

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 2,352.19 1,266.97
Average Latency (ms) 2,382.76 1,276.36
Maximum Latency (ms) 2,393.79 1,287.38
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2,405.65 1,280.93

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 4,593.00 13,615.00
Queries per second 45,930.00 136,150.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.29 0.67
Average Latency (ms) 2.17 0.73
Maximum Latency (ms) 13.82 2.51
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.02 0.84

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 3,486.00 12,081.00
Queries per second 34,860.00 120,810.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.26 0.64
Average Latency (ms) 2.86 0.83
Maximum Latency (ms) 33.41 9.17
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.33 0.95

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 1,761.00 5,846.00
Queries per second 17,610.00 58,460.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 3.36 1.42
Average Latency (ms) 5.67 1.71
Maximum Latency (ms) 16.69 9.83
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 7.98 1.93

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 6,877.00 18,517.00
Queries per second 68,770.00 185,170.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.65 0.42
Average Latency (ms) 1.45 0.54
Maximum Latency (ms) 9.48 7.24
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.35 0.63

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 833,039.00 2,249,592.00
Queries per second 8,330,390.00 22,495,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 670.02 194.18
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 122,209.00 360,565.00
Queries per second 1,222,090.00 3,605,650.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.02
Average Latency (ms) 0.08 0.03
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.73 0.81
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.14 0.04

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 3,294.00 11,291.00
Queries per second 32,940.00 112,910.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.13 0.22
Average Latency (ms) 3.03 0.88
Maximum Latency (ms) 17.77 2.32
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.65 1.14

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 5,143.00 13,877.00
Queries per second 51,430.00 138,770.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.52 0.24
Average Latency (ms) 1.94 0.72
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.8 1.67
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.02 0.94

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 5,821.00 18,476.00
Queries per second 58,210.00 184,760.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.62 0.43
Average Latency (ms) 1.71 0.54
Maximum Latency (ms) 21.71 11.13
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.3 0.64

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 7,391.00 18,856.00
Queries per second 73,910.00 188,560.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.57 0.44
Average Latency (ms) 1.35 0.53
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.09 7.71
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.14 0.61

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 51,002.00 235,558.00
Queries per second 510,020.00 2,355,580.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.02
Average Latency (ms) 0.19 0.04
Maximum Latency (ms) 9.61 6.96
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.12 0.07

Redis

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 31,026.99 46,490.00
PING_MBULK per Second 34,530.39 46,253.47
SET per Second 35,945.36 47,258.98
GET per Second 34,293.55 47,103.16
INCR per Second 23,820.87 47,415.84
LPUSH per Second 30,931.02 47,961.63
RPUSH per Second 33,014.20 47,573.74
LPOP per Second 30,553.01 45,766.59
RPOP per Second 34,459.00 47,869.79
SADD per Second 37,285.61 47,528.52
HSET per Second 29,002.32 47,460.84
SPOP per Second 32,195.75 46,360.68
ZADD per Second 30,562.35 47,869.79
ZPOPMIN per Second 29,342.72 47,619.05
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 20,024.03 37,693.18
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 11,069.29 23,980.81
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 6,976.42 17,208.74
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 6,141.75 16,358.58
MSET (10 keys) per Second 27,609.06 47,236.65

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
PING_INLINE0.990.66
PING_MBULK0.880.65
SET0.860.66
GET0.900.66
INCR1.330.66
LPUSH1.000.66
RPUSH0.940.66
LPOP1.030.69
RPOP0.910.66
SADD0.830.65
HSET1.070.66
SPOP0.950.66
ZADD1.010.66
ZPOPMIN1.060.65
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)1.620.84
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)2.901.35
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)4.301.78
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)4.791.89
MSET (10 keys)1.250.71

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The Vultr High Performance AMD (2 GB) instance outperforms the DigitalOcean Regular (1 GB) instance in all key benchmarks, especially in Redis SET operations with 47259 RPS compared to DigitalOcean's 32206 RPS, and in MySQL bulk insert with 223,550 TPS versus DigitalOcean's 73,728 TPS. Despite both providing similar IOPS and latency in file operations, Vultr's superior CPU performance and higher benchmark throughput make it the clear winner for applications requiring high CPU and memory performance.

From the friendly human:

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Providers & pricing

DigitalOcean overview Vultr overviewDigitalOcean Regular (1 GB) pricing Vultr High Performance AMD (2 GB) pricing

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