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DigitalOcean Regular (1 GB) vs. Vultr High Performance Intel (1 GB)

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Fresh benchmarks coming at ya. Today I spun up fresh instances from DigitalOcean and Vultr and ran some benchmarks. Each instance was spun up with Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 and were created in the New York area (or close to it). Let's get into the numbers.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Last Benchmarked Sat, 01 Aug 2026 05:00:48 GMT Sat, 01 Aug 2026 05:12:47 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 $6.00
RAM (GB) 1 1
CPU Cores 1 1
Storage (TB) 25 25
Storage Type SSD NVMe
Transfer (TB) 1 2

Head-to-head

Category winners from the latest benchmarks.

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

Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB) takes 6 of 6 categories.

CPU

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Vendor GenuineIntel GenuineIntel
Model Name DO-Regular Intel Xeon Processor (Cascadelake)
Clock Speed (MHz) 2,494.14 2,992.91
CPU Cache Size (KB) 4,096.00 16,384.00
BogoMips 4,988.28 5,985.82
Events per Second 815.71 1,085.49
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.98 0.87
Average Latency (ms) 1.22 0.92
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.86 1.53
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.5 1.04

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Operations per second 3,956,759.89 5,287,233.83
Mebibytes per second 3,864.02 5,163.31
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.03 0.53
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Operations per second 3,883,080.49 5,446,064.29
Mebibytes per second 3,792.07 5,318.42
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 6.51 0.39
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Reads per Second 2,180.62 3,945.14
Writes per Second 1,453.75 2,630.10
Fsyncs per Second 4,652.64 8,418.81
Read Mebibytes per Second 34.07 61.64
Written Mebibytes per Second 22.71 41.10
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.12 0.07
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.63 2.96
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.34 0.2

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 2,077.12 1,674.69
Average Latency (ms) 2,109.98 1,689.62
Maximum Latency (ms) 2,125.57 1,697.70
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2,120.76 1,708.63

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 6,111.00 9,332.00
Queries per second 61,110.00 93,320.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.13 0.93
Average Latency (ms) 1.63 1.07
Maximum Latency (ms) 16.53 15.52
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.3 1.32

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 3,456.00 11,031.00
Queries per second 34,560.00 110,310.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.3 0.69
Average Latency (ms) 2.89 0.9
Maximum Latency (ms) 17.71 11.47
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.57 1.23

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 2,206.00 4,749.00
Queries per second 22,060.00 47,490.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.57 1.79
Average Latency (ms) 4.53 2.1
Maximum Latency (ms) 12.36 7.52
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 6.55 2.57

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 6,940.00 18,923.00
Queries per second 69,400.00 189,230.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.52 0.39
Average Latency (ms) 1.43 0.53
Maximum Latency (ms) 22.94 10.45
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.57 0.68

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 1,084,592.00 1,375,842.00
Queries per second 10,845,920.00 13,758,420.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 506.06 345.61
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 160,315.00 263,886.00
Queries per second 1,603,150.00 2,638,860.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.03
Average Latency (ms) 0.06 0.04
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.76 2.47
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.1 0.05

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 3,209.00 6,167.00
Queries per second 32,090.00 61,670.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.96 0.53
Average Latency (ms) 3.11 1.62
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.53 6.42
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.57 2.11

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 5,822.00 8,650.00
Queries per second 58,220.00 86,500.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.52 0.43
Average Latency (ms) 1.71 1.15
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.33 3.4
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.86 1.52

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 9,262.00 18,825.00
Queries per second 92,620.00 188,250.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.52 0.4
Average Latency (ms) 1.08 0.53
Maximum Latency (ms) 21.4 5.88
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.82 0.69

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 8,187.00 19,241.00
Queries per second 81,870.00 192,410.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.53 0.39
Average Latency (ms) 1.22 0.52
Maximum Latency (ms) 14.67 4.64
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.18 0.65

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 79,336.00 200,203.00
Queries per second 793,360.00 2,002,030.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.03
Average Latency (ms) 0.13 0.05
Maximum Latency (ms) 11.85 3.61
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.34 0.08

Redis

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 44,722.72 70,472.16
PING_MBULK per Second 44,267.38 75,187.97
SET per Second 47,687.18 73,909.83
GET per Second 45,351.48 69,156.30
INCR per Second 43,535.05 59,952.04
LPUSH per Second 39,047.25 52,576.24
RPUSH per Second 37,481.26 68,634.18
LPOP per Second 40,404.04 59,171.59
RPOP per Second 38,595.14 53,219.80
SADD per Second 38,834.95 67,430.88
HSET per Second 35,932.45 63,734.86
SPOP per Second 32,000.00 43,859.65
ZADD per Second 30,750.31 43,365.13
ZPOPMIN per Second 30,854.68 49,285.36
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 24,789.29 36,982.25
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 13,390.47 19,992.00
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 8,059.32 12,827.09
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 7,098.74 10,901.56
MSET (10 keys) per Second 41,928.72 64,350.06

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
PING_INLINE0.690.45
PING_MBULK0.690.42
SET0.650.44
GET0.680.46
INCR0.710.53
LPUSH0.800.61
RPUSH0.820.47
LPOP0.780.55
RPOP0.810.62
SADD0.790.47
HSET0.860.51
SPOP0.960.72
ZADD1.010.75
ZPOPMIN1.000.64
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)1.310.90
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)2.441.61
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)3.792.58
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)4.252.88
MSET (10 keys)0.810.61

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

Based on benchmark results, the Vultr High Performance Intel (1 GB) instance significantly outperforms the DigitalOcean Regular (1 GB) in almost all metrics, especially in CPU operations with an events per second of 1085.49 compared to DigitalOcean's 815.71, and in Redis performance where Vultr's SET operation achieves 73909.83 requests per second compared to DigitalOcean's 47687.18. For applications requiring high CPU and memory throughput, such as compute-intensive tasks or high-traffic web services, the Vultr instance is clearly superior. Conversely, for budget-conscious users needing basic web hosting or low-demand applications, the DigitalOcean instance provides sufficient performance at a lower cost.

From the friendly human:

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Providers & pricing

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

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