DigitalOcean Regular (2 GB) vs. Vultr Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Same showdown, different day. Today I've spun up some brand new instance from DigitalOcean and Vultr and did some benchmarking. Each instance was spun up with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and were created in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Let's get into the numbers.
Overview
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Last Benchmarked | Tue, 12 May 2026 23:00:52 GMT | Sun, 10 May 2026 23:00:52 GMT |
| Linux Distro | Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 | Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 |
| Kernel Version | 6.8.0-71-generic | 6.8.0-111-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 | $12.00 | $40.00 |
| RAM (GB) | 2 | 8 |
| CPU Cores | 1 | 4 |
| Storage (TB) | 50 | 160 |
| Storage Type | SSD | SSD |
| Transfer (TB) | 2 | 4 |
CPU
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | GenuineIntel | GenuineIntel |
| Model Name | DO-Regular | Intel Xeon Processor (Skylake, IBRS) |
| Clock Speed (MHz) | 2,294.61 | 2,593.90 |
| CPU Cache Size (KB) | 4,096.00 | 16,384.00 |
| BogoMips | 4,589.21 | 5,187.80 |
| Events per Second | 408.72 | 1,019.64 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.98 | 0.89 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 2.44 | 0.98 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 30.57 | 1.69 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 4.1 | 1.18 |
Memory
Memory Read
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Operations per second | 1,633,276.41 | 3,471,971.03 |
| Mebibytes per second | 1,595.00 | 3,390.60 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 3.35 | 0.19 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
Memory Write
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Operations per second | 1,592,941.48 | 3,453,487.12 |
| Mebibytes per second | 1,555.61 | 3,372.55 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 5.53 | 0.51 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
File I/O
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Reads per Second | 1,584.78 | 4,705.72 |
| Writes per Second | 1,056.52 | 3,137.15 |
| Fsyncs per Second | 3,385.97 | 10,046.46 |
| Read Mebibytes per Second | 24.76 | 73.53 |
| Written Mebibytes per Second | 16.51 | 49.02 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.16 | 0.06 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 20.31 | 16.97 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0.51 | 0.19 |
Mutex
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 2,434.32 | 169.72 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 2,473.55 | 375.85 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 2,489.41 | 464.95 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 2,493.86 | 467.30 |
MySQL
MySQL Read-only
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 4,752.00 | 4,535.00 |
| Queries per second | 47,520.00 | 45,350.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 1.23 | 1.75 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 2.1 | 2.2 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 5.76 | 6.38 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 2.66 | 2.76 |
MySQL Write-only
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 1,930.00 | 4,365.00 |
| Queries per second | 19,300.00 | 43,650.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 2.65 | 1.38 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 5.18 | 2.29 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 56.83 | 24.46 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 7.98 | 2.86 |
MySQL Read/Write
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 1,306.00 | 2,014.00 |
| Queries per second | 13,060.00 | 20,140.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 4.6 | 3.42 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 7.65 | 4.96 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 28.54 | 21.74 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 10.09 | 5.88 |
MySQL INSERT
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 3,148.00 | 6,155.00 |
| Queries per second | 31,480.00 | 61,550.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 1.72 | 0.92 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 3.17 | 1.62 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 32.67 | 18.45 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 4.41 | 1.93 |
MySQL Bulk INSERT
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 669,209.00 | 865,805.00 |
| Queries per second | 6,692,090.00 | 8,658,050.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.02 | 0.01 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 772.1 | 551.87 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
MySQL SELECT
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 136,020.00 | 128,819.00 |
| Queries per second | 1,360,200.00 | 1,288,190.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.04 | 0.05 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.07 | 0.08 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 3.33 | 1.64 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0.11 | 0.11 |
MySQL SELECT (Random Points)
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 3,617.00 | 3,997.00 |
| Queries per second | 36,170.00 | 39,970.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.82 | 1.06 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 2.76 | 2.5 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 12.27 | 6.9 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 3.82 | 3.36 |
MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 3,087.00 | 2,438.00 |
| Queries per second | 30,870.00 | 24,380.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.67 | 0.72 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 3.23 | 4.1 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 8.52 | 7.6 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 5.18 | 5.67 |
MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 2,586.00 | 5,931.00 |
| Queries per second | 25,860.00 | 59,310.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 1.8 | 0.99 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 3.86 | 1.69 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 45.13 | 20.58 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 6.21 | 2.11 |
MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 3,094.00 | 5,850.00 |
| Queries per second | 30,940.00 | 58,500.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 1.83 | 0.99 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 3.23 | 1.71 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 35.75 | 39.87 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 4.65 | 2.11 |
MySQL DELETE
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 19,562.00 | 52,741.00 |
| Queries per second | 195,620.00 | 527,410.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.04 | 0.05 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.51 | 0.19 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 32.94 | 18.9 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 3.02 | 1.3 |
Redis
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| PING_INLINE per Second | 39,729.84 | 51,894.13 |
| PING_MBULK per Second | 42,176.30 | 50,968.40 |
| SET per Second | 40,833.00 | 51,599.59 |
| GET per Second | 34,590.11 | 52,770.45 |
| INCR per Second | 35,410.77 | 50,530.57 |
| LPUSH per Second | 39,184.95 | 49,603.17 |
| RPUSH per Second | 36,509.68 | 52,882.07 |
| LPOP per Second | 36,791.76 | 53,050.40 |
| RPOP per Second | 38,834.95 | 52,164.84 |
| SADD per Second | 35,727.05 | 50,556.12 |
| HSET per Second | 35,790.98 | 50,226.02 |
| SPOP per Second | 39,478.88 | 50,864.70 |
| ZADD per Second | 38,850.04 | 50,403.23 |
| ZPOPMIN per Second | 40,338.84 | 49,850.45 |
| LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second | 17,461.15 | 26,659.56 |
| LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second | 7,711.29 | 12,700.03 |
| LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second | 4,860.50 | 8,335.42 |
| LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second | 4,094.67 | 7,218.13 |
| MSET (10 keys) per Second | 32,041.01 | 48,239.27 |
Redis Average Latency (ms)
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| PING_INLINE | 0.83 | 0.50 |
| PING_MBULK | 0.78 | 0.51 |
| SET | 0.82 | 0.51 |
| GET | 0.94 | 0.49 |
| INCR | 0.93 | 0.51 |
| LPUSH | 0.85 | 0.53 |
| RPUSH | 0.91 | 0.50 |
| LPOP | 0.92 | 0.51 |
| RPOP | 0.87 | 0.50 |
| SADD | 0.92 | 0.52 |
| HSET | 0.93 | 0.52 |
| SPOP | 0.84 | 0.52 |
| ZADD | 0.86 | 0.52 |
| ZPOPMIN | 0.82 | 0.53 |
| LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) | 2.05 | 1.05 |
| LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) | 4.59 | 2.09 |
| LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) | 7.19 | 3.25 |
| LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) | 8.42 | 3.76 |
| MSET (10 keys) | 1.12 | 0.81 |
Conclusion
From the friendly robots:
After analyzing the benchmark results, the Vultr Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) instance shows significantly higher performance across most metrics compared to the DigitalOcean Regular (2 GB) instance, particularly in CPU operations per second, Redis operations per second, and MySQL bulk inserts. The Vultr instance excels with its higher throughput for file I/O operations and memory read/write operations, suggesting it is well-suited for CPU-intensive, I/O-heavy workloads, and tasks requiring high concurrency. Meanwhile, the DigitalOcean instance, while less powerful in raw metrics, provides a more cost-effective option for smaller, less demanding applications and development environments where moderate performance is sufficient.
From the friendly human:
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