VPS Showdown VPS Showdown

DigitalOcean Regular (2 GB) vs. Vultr Cloud Compute (1 GB)

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Welcome to another round of the VPS Showdown. Today I spun up fresh instances from DigitalOcean and Vultr and did some benchmarking. All instances were running 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 (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Last Benchmarked Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:31:21 GMT Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:30:37 GMT
Linux Distro Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version 7.0.0-27-generic 7.0.0-27-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 $12.00 $5.00
RAM (GB) 2 1
CPU Cores 1 1
Storage (TB) 50 25
Storage Type SSD SSD
Transfer (TB) 2 1

Head-to-head

Category winners from the latest benchmarks.

CategoryWinner
CPU (events/sec)Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Memory (read MiB/s)DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Disk I/O (MiB/s)DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
MySQL (read/write tps)Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Redis (GET/sec)DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Value (CPU events per $/mo)Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)

Evenly matched across 6 categories.

CPU

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Vendor GenuineIntel GenuineIntel
Model Name DO-Regular Intel Core Processor (Broadwell, no TSX, IBRS)
Clock Speed (MHz) 2,494.14 2,394.45
CPU Cache Size (KB) 4,096.00 16,384.00
BogoMips 4,988.28 4,788.90
Events per Second 411.59 704.30
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.99 1.23
Average Latency (ms) 2.42 1.42
Maximum Latency (ms) 19.9 3.04
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.96 1.73

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Operations per second 4,123,717.02 3,595,908.88
Mebibytes per second 4,027.07 3,511.63
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.54 0.61
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Operations per second 4,007,053.05 3,455,305.83
Mebibytes per second 3,913.14 3,374.32
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.82 4.29
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Reads per Second 2,758.95 1,878.82
Writes per Second 1,839.23 1,252.51
Fsyncs per Second 5,895.77 4,014.75
Read Mebibytes per Second 43.11 29.36
Written Mebibytes per Second 28.74 19.57
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.09 0.14
Maximum Latency (ms) 11.81 11.08
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.3 0.4

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 2,498.24 2,084.67
Average Latency (ms) 2,546.75 2,093.52
Maximum Latency (ms) 2,562.19 2,098.38
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2,585.31 2,082.91

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 5,626.00 4,684.00
Queries per second 56,260.00 46,840.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.18 1.71
Average Latency (ms) 1.77 2.13
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.44 9.23
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.39 3.02

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 4,813.00 3,785.00
Queries per second 48,130.00 37,850.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.92 1.46
Average Latency (ms) 2.07 2.64
Maximum Latency (ms) 29.26 33.7
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.19 3.82

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 1,931.00 2,104.00
Queries per second 19,310.00 21,040.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.94 3.41
Average Latency (ms) 5.17 4.75
Maximum Latency (ms) 17.66 10.72
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 7.17 6.91

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 6,585.00 7,970.00
Queries per second 65,850.00 79,700.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.56 0.8
Average Latency (ms) 1.51 1.25
Maximum Latency (ms) 11.88 22.57
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.71 1.7

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 833,039.00 734,741.00
Queries per second 8,330,390.00 7,347,410.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 568.39 700.22
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 148,439.00 107,531.00
Queries per second 1,484,390.00 1,075,310.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.07
Average Latency (ms) 0.07 0.09
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.95 1.82
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.1 0.13

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 3,505.00 3,796.00
Queries per second 35,050.00 37,960.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.98 0.93
Average Latency (ms) 2.85 2.63
Maximum Latency (ms) 6.79 7.47
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.25 3.82

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 5,769.00 5,117.00
Queries per second 57,690.00 51,170.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.53 0.67
Average Latency (ms) 1.73 1.95
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.73 5.04
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.66 3.19

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 6,299.00 7,164.00
Queries per second 62,990.00 71,640.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.57 0.82
Average Latency (ms) 1.58 1.39
Maximum Latency (ms) 28.52 28.24
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.07 2.03

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 7,198.00 7,738.00
Queries per second 71,980.00 77,380.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.51 0.78
Average Latency (ms) 1.39 1.29
Maximum Latency (ms) 167.69 17.75
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.35 1.76

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 33,426.00 52,919.00
Queries per second 334,260.00 529,190.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.07
Average Latency (ms) 0.3 0.19
Maximum Latency (ms) 22.19 26.33
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.61 1.04

Redis

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 34,188.04 28,835.06
PING_MBULK per Second 44,483.99 30,778.70
SET per Second 40,112.31 28,918.45
GET per Second 40,883.07 28,669.72
INCR per Second 39,729.84 30,656.04
LPUSH per Second 40,404.04 30,911.90
RPUSH per Second 37,397.16 26,968.72
LPOP per Second 37,257.82 30,618.49
RPOP per Second 36,114.12 31,123.56
SADD per Second 37,425.15 30,358.23
HSET per Second 38,759.69 29,299.74
SPOP per Second 45,641.26 30,627.87
ZADD per Second 42,283.30 30,358.23
ZPOPMIN per Second 47,438.33 31,367.63
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 23,089.36 22,138.59
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 12,169.89 11,909.01
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 8,394.19 7,708.32
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 6,932.89 7,203.57
MSET (10 keys) per Second 31,796.50 30,312.21

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
PING_INLINE0.941.04
PING_MBULK0.690.96
SET0.771.05
GET0.751.05
INCR0.780.98
LPUSH0.780.98
RPUSH0.841.15
LPOP0.851.00
RPOP0.870.98
SADD0.830.99
HSET0.811.03
SPOP0.680.97
ZADD0.741.00
ZPOPMIN0.650.95
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)1.401.44
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)2.632.62
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)3.623.84
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)4.244.05
MSET (10 keys)1.061.07

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The DigitalOcean instance decisively outperforms the Vultr instance across all benchmarks, particularly in Redis commands like ZADD with 42283.3 RPS compared to Vultr's 30358.23 RPS, and in MySQL bulk insert with 82488.07 TPS versus Vultr's 72833.27 TPS. These substantial differences indicate DigitalOcean is the better choice for CPU-intensive workloads needing high throughput and low latency, such as high-performance web applications or database servers.

From the friendly human:

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vs. DigitalOcean Regular (1 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Regular (1 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Premium Intel (1 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Premium Intel (2 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Premium Intel (1 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Premium AMD (1 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Premium Intel (2 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Premium AMD (2 GB)