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

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My friend, I'm so glad you're here! Today I've got brand new instances from DigitalOcean and Vultr to run some benchmarks on. 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 (2 GB)
Last Benchmarked Thu, 01 Oct 2026 05:00:49 GMT Tue, 01 Sep 2026 05:13:32 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 Intel (2 GB)
Memory (read MiB/s)Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Disk I/O (MiB/s)Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
MySQL (read/write tps)Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Redis (GET/sec)Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Value (CPU events per $/mo)DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)

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

CPU

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Vendor GenuineIntel GenuineIntel
Model Name DO-Regular Intel Xeon Processor (Cascadelake)
Clock Speed (MHz) 2,494.14 2,893.21
CPU Cache Size (KB) 4,096.00 16,384.00
BogoMips 4,988.27 5,786.41
Events per Second 705.37 1,011.48
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.98 0.89
Average Latency (ms) 1.41 0.99
Maximum Latency (ms) 12.76 2.15
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2 1.25

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Operations per second 3,663,208.77 5,186,399.33
Mebibytes per second 3,577.35 5,064.84
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.47 0.58
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Operations per second 3,890,887.47 5,103,338.99
Mebibytes per second 3,799.69 4,983.73
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.33 1.94
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Reads per Second 2,194.30 3,831.53
Writes per Second 1,462.87 2,554.36
Fsyncs per Second 4,688.57 8,179.23
Read Mebibytes per Second 34.29 59.87
Written Mebibytes per Second 22.86 39.91
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.12 0.07
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.7 2.28
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.32 0.21

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 2,352.19 1,735.94
Average Latency (ms) 2,382.76 1,756.88
Maximum Latency (ms) 2,393.79 1,766.31
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2,405.65 1,771.29

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 4,593.00 8,164.00
Queries per second 45,930.00 81,640.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.29 0.99
Average Latency (ms) 2.17 1.22
Maximum Latency (ms) 13.82 7.57
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.02 1.67

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 3,486.00 10,122.00
Queries per second 34,860.00 101,220.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.26 0.72
Average Latency (ms) 2.86 0.99
Maximum Latency (ms) 33.41 8.81
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.33 1.37

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 1,761.00 3,490.00
Queries per second 17,610.00 34,900.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 3.36 1.98
Average Latency (ms) 5.67 2.86
Maximum Latency (ms) 16.69 12.95
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 7.98 4.03

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 6,877.00 15,691.00
Queries per second 68,770.00 156,910.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.65 0.42
Average Latency (ms) 1.45 0.63
Maximum Latency (ms) 9.48 6.6
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.35 0.87

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 833,039.00 1,084,592.00
Queries per second 8,330,390.00 10,845,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 670.02 581.84
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 122,209.00 225,553.00
Queries per second 1,222,090.00 2,255,530.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.08 0.04
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.73 1.59
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.14 0.07

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 3,294.00 5,528.00
Queries per second 32,940.00 55,280.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.13 0.64
Average Latency (ms) 3.03 1.81
Maximum Latency (ms) 17.77 5.91
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.65 2.52

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 5,143.00 7,887.00
Queries per second 51,430.00 78,870.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.52 0.41
Average Latency (ms) 1.94 1.27
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.8 7.06
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.02 1.89

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 5,821.00 16,393.00
Queries per second 58,210.00 163,930.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.62 0.42
Average Latency (ms) 1.71 0.61
Maximum Latency (ms) 21.71 5.96
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.3 0.84

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 7,391.00 17,497.00
Queries per second 73,910.00 174,970.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.57 0.4
Average Latency (ms) 1.35 0.57
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.09 4.42
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.14 0.74

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 51,002.00 145,609.00
Queries per second 510,020.00 1,456,090.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.03
Average Latency (ms) 0.19 0.07
Maximum Latency (ms) 9.61 4.46
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.12 0.12

Redis

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 31,026.99 64,892.93
PING_MBULK per Second 34,530.39 69,108.50
SET per Second 35,945.36 69,735.01
GET per Second 34,293.55 70,821.53
INCR per Second 23,820.87 63,371.36
LPUSH per Second 30,931.02 61,576.36
RPUSH per Second 33,014.20 64,808.82
LPOP per Second 30,553.01 61,842.92
RPOP per Second 34,459.00 61,312.08
SADD per Second 37,285.61 63,411.54
HSET per Second 29,002.32 63,331.22
SPOP per Second 32,195.75 63,371.36
ZADD per Second 30,562.35 63,979.53
ZPOPMIN per Second 29,342.72 65,231.57
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 20,024.03 36,456.43
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 11,069.29 17,639.79
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 6,976.42 11,498.22
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 6,141.75 9,613.54
MSET (10 keys) per Second 27,609.06 54,347.82

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
PING_INLINE0.990.49
PING_MBULK0.880.46
SET0.860.46
GET0.900.45
INCR1.330.51
LPUSH1.000.52
RPUSH0.940.50
LPOP1.030.52
RPOP0.910.53
SADD0.830.50
HSET1.070.51
SPOP0.950.50
ZADD1.010.50
ZPOPMIN1.060.49
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)1.620.92
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)2.901.83
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)4.302.82
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)4.793.27
MSET (10 keys)1.250.72

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The Vultr High Performance Intel (2 GB) instance benchmarks significantly outperform the DigitalOcean Regular (1 GB) instance across most metrics, especially in Redis operations where it achieves higher request rates per second and lower latencies, e.g., LPUSH at 61,576.36 rps vs. 33,590.86 rps, and GET at 70,821.53 rps vs. 32,488.63 rps. The Vultr instance also excels in MySQL bulk insert with 108,353.15 tps compared to DigitalOcean's 73,728.04 tps. This makes the Vultr instance a better choice for CPU-heavy and memory-intensive applications where higher performance is critical.

From the friendly human:

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Providers & pricing

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

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