DigitalOcean Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) vs. Vultr Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)

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Same showdown, different day. Today I've spun up brand new instance from DigitalOcean and Vultr to run some benchmarks on. Each instance was spun up with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and all resided in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Without further ado, here's the results.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Last Benchmarked Fri, 12 Jun 2026 20:00:52 GMT Thu, 11 Jun 2026 09:00:52 GMT
Linux Distro Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version 6.8.0-71-generic 6.8.0-124-generic
MySQL Version 8.0.46-0ubuntu0.24.04.2 8.0.46-0ubuntu0.24.04.2
Redis Version 7.0.15 7.0.15
Location New York, NY Newark, NJ
Monthly Price $18.00 $20.00
RAM (GB) 2 4
CPU Cores 2 2
Storage (TB) 60 80
Storage Type SSD SSD
Transfer (TB) 3 3

CPU

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Vendor GenuineIntel GenuineIntel
Model Name DO-Regular Intel Xeon Processor (Skylake, IBRS)
Clock Speed (MHz) 2,294.61 2,593.91
CPU Cache Size (KB) 4,096.00 16,384.00
BogoMips 4,589.21 5,187.81
Events per Second 722.30 1,022.39
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.98 0.88
Average Latency (ms) 1.38 0.98
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.65 1.77
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.61 1.21

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Operations per second 3,249,151.78 3,523,809.57
Mebibytes per second 3,173.00 3,441.22
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.46 0.22
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Operations per second 3,238,300.17 3,568,203.77
Mebibytes per second 3,162.40 3,484.57
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.18 1.02
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Reads per Second 1,005.31 2,972.63
Writes per Second 670.21 1,981.75
Fsyncs per Second 2,147.46 6,347.81
Read Mebibytes per Second 15.71 46.45
Written Mebibytes per Second 10.47 30.96
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.26 0.09
Maximum Latency (ms) 32.11 17.12
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.8 0.33

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Minimum Latency (ms) 1,757.11 899.28
Average Latency (ms) 1,804.63 935.93
Maximum Latency (ms) 1,843.21 969.92
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1,836.24 977.74

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 2,612.00 3,779.00
Queries per second 26,120.00 37,790.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.58 1.84
Average Latency (ms) 3.82 2.64
Maximum Latency (ms) 74.75 24.55
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 7.17 3.82

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 1,416.00 4,044.00
Queries per second 14,160.00 40,440.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 3.55 1.4
Average Latency (ms) 7.05 2.47
Maximum Latency (ms) 47.9 13.46
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 13.22 3.3

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 756.00 1,798.00
Queries per second 7,560.00 17,980.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 6.17 3.86
Average Latency (ms) 13.22 5.56
Maximum Latency (ms) 63.4 27.33
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 25.74 6.91

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 2,154.00 6,405.00
Queries per second 21,540.00 64,050.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.38 0.99
Average Latency (ms) 4.63 1.56
Maximum Latency (ms) 35.58 15.15
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 7.84 2.03

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 636,443.00 865,805.00
Queries per second 6,364,430.00 8,658,050.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.02 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 1039.58 538.25
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 90,735.00 126,618.00
Queries per second 907,350.00 1,266,180.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.05 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.11 0.08
Maximum Latency (ms) 11.99 2.46
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.17 0.11

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 2,697.00 3,674.00
Queries per second 26,970.00 36,740.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.37 1.07
Average Latency (ms) 3.7 2.72
Maximum Latency (ms) 34.62 6.45
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 6.79 3.55

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 2,474.00 2,728.00
Queries per second 24,740.00 27,280.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.32 1.3
Average Latency (ms) 4.03 3.66
Maximum Latency (ms) 22.86 11.85
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 6.67 5

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 1,687.00 5,438.00
Queries per second 16,870.00 54,380.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.66 0.99
Average Latency (ms) 5.92 1.84
Maximum Latency (ms) 111.39 13.86
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 11.24 2.71

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 1,680.00 6,370.00
Queries per second 16,800.00 63,700.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.71 1.01
Average Latency (ms) 5.95 1.57
Maximum Latency (ms) 150.38 8.99
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 10.84 2.07

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 7,371.00 51,180.00
Queries per second 73,710.00 511,800.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.05 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 1.35 0.19
Maximum Latency (ms) 28.01 6.11
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 6.91 1.39

Redis

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
PING_INLINE per Second 38,729.67 49,677.10
PING_MBULK per Second 28,003.36 45,372.05
SET per Second 26,816.84 45,392.64
GET per Second 32,133.68 53,163.21
INCR per Second 30,674.85 48,732.94
LPUSH per Second 37,921.88 50,327.12
RPUSH per Second 38,654.81 48,285.85
LPOP per Second 38,343.56 48,355.90
RPOP per Second 36,127.17 51,413.88
SADD per Second 41,101.52 48,332.53
HSET per Second 37,807.18 49,285.36
SPOP per Second 39,856.52 48,332.53
ZADD per Second 41,050.90 51,229.51
ZPOPMIN per Second 43,975.38 45,085.66
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 25,000.00 27,122.32
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 11,362.35 12,442.45
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 7,602.25 7,930.21
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 6,749.92 6,902.74
MSET (10 keys) per Second 40,916.53 45,146.73

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (4 GB, 2 Cores)
PING_INLINE0.730.53
PING_MBULK1.130.57
SET1.200.57
GET0.960.49
INCR1.030.53
LPUSH0.760.51
RPUSH0.730.54
LPOP0.750.54
RPOP0.820.52
SADD0.670.55
HSET0.760.54
SPOP0.680.54
ZADD0.670.52
ZPOPMIN0.600.57
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)1.141.02
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)2.772.29
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)4.123.27
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)4.723.91
MSET (10 keys)0.810.78

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

Both instances deliver solid performance, but they cater to slightly different use cases. The DigitalOcean instance excels in providing a cost-effective solution with respectable benchmarks for a variety of operations, particularly when it comes to Redis operations which show high requests per second and low latencies. The Vultr instance, with its higher RAM and slightly better CPU, offers a bit more performance in terms of overall throughput, especially noticeable in the file IO benchmarks where it achieves higher read and write throughput. For users looking for cost-efficiency and solid general performance, the DigitalOcean instance is ideal, whereas the Vultr instance might be better suited for users requiring slightly higher RAM and who need better performance in file IO operations.

From the friendly human:

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