DigitalOcean Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) vs. Vultr Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Welcome to another round of the VPS Showdown. Today I've spun up some brand new instance from DigitalOcean and Vultr and ran my world famous suite of benchmarking scripts. Each instance was running Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and all resided in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Time to see who showed up today.
Overview
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Last Benchmarked | Thu, 21 May 2026 21:00:52 GMT | Sat, 23 May 2026 11:00:52 GMT |
| Linux Distro | Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 | Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 |
| Kernel Version | 6.8.0-71-generic | 6.8.0-117-generic |
| MySQL Version | 8.0.45-0ubuntu0.24.04.1 | 8.0.45-0ubuntu0.24.04.1 |
| Redis Version | 7.0.15 | 7.0.15 |
| Location | New York, NY | Newark, NJ |
| Monthly Price | $18.00 | $40.00 |
| RAM (GB) | 2 | 8 |
| CPU Cores | 2 | 4 |
| Storage (TB) | 60 | 160 |
| Storage Type | SSD | SSD |
| Transfer (TB) | 3 | 4 |
CPU
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | GenuineIntel | GenuineIntel |
| Model Name | DO-Regular | Intel Xeon Processor (Skylake, IBRS) |
| Clock Speed (MHz) | 2,494.14 | 2,593.90 |
| CPU Cache Size (KB) | 4,096.00 | 16,384.00 |
| BogoMips | 4,988.28 | 5,187.80 |
| Events per Second | 768.92 | 1,100.82 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.92 | 0.88 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 1.3 | 0.91 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 7.08 | 1.56 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 1.67 | 0.97 |
Memory
Memory Read
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Operations per second | 3,519,664.60 | 3,685,781.23 |
| Mebibytes per second | 3,437.17 | 3,599.40 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 4.14 | 1.03 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
Memory Write
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Operations per second | 3,598,763.05 | 3,590,629.63 |
| Mebibytes per second | 3,514.42 | 3,506.47 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 8.08 | 1.16 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
File I/O
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Reads per Second | 1,450.14 | 4,999.39 |
| Writes per Second | 966.76 | 3,332.93 |
| Fsyncs per Second | 3,097.03 | 10,670.47 |
| Read Mebibytes per Second | 22.66 | 78.12 |
| Written Mebibytes per Second | 15.11 | 52.08 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.18 | 0.05 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 13.35 | 37.52 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0.55 | 0.18 |
Mutex
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 1,676.42 | 369.37 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 1,690.05 | 416.22 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 1,704.44 | 441.77 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 1,708.63 | 442.73 |
MySQL
MySQL Read-only
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 3,989.00 | 5,144.00 |
| Queries per second | 39,890.00 | 51,440.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 1.45 | 1.72 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 2.5 | 1.94 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 29.46 | 7.67 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 3.49 | 2.35 |
MySQL Write-only
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 3,063.00 | 5,108.00 |
| Queries per second | 30,630.00 | 51,080.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 1.25 | 1.15 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 3.26 | 1.96 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 31.03 | 12.52 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 5.99 | 2.71 |
MySQL Read/Write
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 1,566.00 | 2,247.00 |
| Queries per second | 15,660.00 | 22,470.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 2.76 | 3.08 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 6.38 | 4.45 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 32.63 | 29.7 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 10.84 | 5.28 |
MySQL INSERT
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 3,972.00 | 7,630.00 |
| Queries per second | 39,720.00 | 76,300.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.77 | 0.71 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 2.51 | 1.31 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 28.48 | 29.81 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 5.28 | 1.55 |
MySQL Bulk INSERT
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 898,571.00 | 898,571.00 |
| Queries per second | 8,985,710.00 | 8,985,710.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.01 | 0.01 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 610.43 | 505.86 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
MySQL SELECT
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 97,681.00 | 149,465.00 |
| Queries per second | 976,810.00 | 1,494,650.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.04 | 0.05 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.1 | 0.07 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 19.96 | 1.22 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0.19 | 0.09 |
MySQL SELECT (Random Points)
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 3,351.00 | 4,249.00 |
| Queries per second | 33,510.00 | 42,490.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 1.02 | 0.83 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 2.98 | 2.35 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 35.86 | 6.6 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 5 | 3.02 |
MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 4,134.00 | 2,637.00 |
| Queries per second | 41,340.00 | 26,370.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.85 | 0.94 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 2.41 | 3.79 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 15.67 | 6.3 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 3.75 | 5.09 |
MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 3,117.00 | 7,166.00 |
| Queries per second | 31,170.00 | 71,660.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.89 | 0.7 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 3.2 | 1.39 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 23.35 | 28.84 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 7.43 | 1.79 |
MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 4,361.00 | 7,661.00 |
| Queries per second | 43,610.00 | 76,610.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.73 | 0.7 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 2.29 | 1.3 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 14.88 | 33.97 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 4.33 | 1.58 |
MySQL DELETE
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 26,950.00 | 69,690.00 |
| Queries per second | 269,500.00 | 696,900.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.04 | 0.05 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.37 | 0.14 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 15.89 | 27.73 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 2.07 | 0.87 |
Redis
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| PING_INLINE per Second | 54,259.36 | 54,436.58 |
| PING_MBULK per Second | 45,085.66 | 48,828.12 |
| SET per Second | 45,433.89 | 51,572.98 |
| GET per Second | 45,085.66 | 48,239.27 |
| INCR per Second | 41,425.02 | 52,328.62 |
| LPUSH per Second | 41,322.31 | 45,454.54 |
| RPUSH per Second | 48,449.61 | 49,751.24 |
| LPOP per Second | 55,401.66 | 53,390.28 |
| RPOP per Second | 48,402.71 | 53,648.07 |
| SADD per Second | 37,979.49 | 48,285.85 |
| HSET per Second | 43,591.98 | 51,493.30 |
| SPOP per Second | 44,365.57 | 52,910.05 |
| ZADD per Second | 49,115.91 | 53,504.55 |
| ZPOPMIN per Second | 44,523.60 | 53,590.57 |
| LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second | 22,158.21 | 28,645.09 |
| LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second | 11,392.12 | 13,131.98 |
| LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second | 8,125.46 | 8,529.51 |
| LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second | 7,885.81 | 7,479.99 |
| MSET (10 keys) per Second | 41,631.97 | 49,212.60 |
Redis Average Latency (ms)
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| PING_INLINE | 0.50 | 0.47 |
| PING_MBULK | 0.62 | 0.53 |
| SET | 0.62 | 0.50 |
| GET | 0.60 | 0.54 |
| INCR | 0.71 | 0.49 |
| LPUSH | 0.72 | 0.58 |
| RPUSH | 0.57 | 0.52 |
| LPOP | 0.49 | 0.49 |
| RPOP | 0.57 | 0.48 |
| SADD | 0.79 | 0.54 |
| HSET | 0.63 | 0.53 |
| SPOP | 0.63 | 0.49 |
| ZADD | 0.56 | 0.48 |
| ZPOPMIN | 0.61 | 0.48 |
| LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) | 1.54 | 0.91 |
| LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) | 2.90 | 1.94 |
| LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) | 4.20 | 3.00 |
| LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) | 4.28 | 3.43 |
| MSET (10 keys) | 0.81 | 0.77 |
Conclusion
From the friendly robots:
The DigitalOcean instance with 2 GB of RAM and 2 CPU cores offers competitive performance in terms of Redis operations, MySQL OLTP, and general file I/O, although it lags behind in CPU benchmarks and has slightly higher latency in memory operations. The Vultr instance with 8 GB of RAM and 4 CPU cores, however, excels in CPU benchmarks, memory operations, and has superior Redis throughput and latency. The Vultr instance is ideal for CPU-intensive workloads, high memory usage, and scenarios requiring more processing power, while the DigitalOcean instance serves better for moderate workloads where the extra RAM and CPU might not be fully utilized. When choosing between these instances, consider the specific requirements of your application in terms of memory, CPU, and I/O operations.
From the friendly human:
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