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

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New day, new benchmarks. Today I spun up fresh instances from DigitalOcean and Vultr and ran some benchmarks. Each instance was spun up with Ubuntu 26.04 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 – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Last Benchmarked Thu, 01 Oct 2026 05:03:47 GMT Tue, 01 Sep 2026 05:07:32 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 $12.00 $6.00
RAM (GB) 2 1
CPU Cores 1 1
Storage (TB) 50 32
Storage Type SSD NVMe
Transfer (TB) 2 1

Head-to-head

Category winners from the latest benchmarks.

CategoryWinner
CPU (events/sec)Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Memory (read MiB/s)Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Disk I/O (MiB/s)Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
MySQL (read/write tps)Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Redis (GET/sec)Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Value (CPU events per $/mo)Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)

Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB) takes 6 of 6 categories.

CPU

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Vendor GenuineIntel GenuineIntel
Model Name DO-Regular Intel Core Processor (Skylake, IBRS, no TSX)
Clock Speed (MHz) 2,294.61 3,792.05
CPU Cache Size (KB) 4,096.00 16,384.00
BogoMips 4,589.21 7,584.09
Events per Second 370.52 1,436.31
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.05 0.67
Average Latency (ms) 2.69 0.7
Maximum Latency (ms) 14.47 2.3
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.57 0.74

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Operations per second 1,545,738.03 7,256,990.82
Mebibytes per second 1,509.51 7,086.91
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 40.5 0.25
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Operations per second 2,729,753.92 7,404,343.90
Mebibytes per second 2,665.78 7,230.80
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 149.26 0.55
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Reads per Second 475.95 4,611.83
Writes per Second 317.30 3,074.55
Fsyncs per Second 1,017.81 9,847.36
Read Mebibytes per Second 7.44 72.06
Written Mebibytes per Second 4.96 48.04
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.55 0.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 115.24 15.14
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.08 0.15

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 2,875.76 1,126.89
Average Latency (ms) 2,899.88 1,134.74
Maximum Latency (ms) 2,919.44 1,139.62
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2,932.60 1,149.76

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 4,374.00 9,766.00
Queries per second 43,740.00 97,660.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.26 0.94
Average Latency (ms) 2.28 1.02
Maximum Latency (ms) 40.05 5.44
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.81 1.16

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 273.00 12,445.00
Queries per second 2,730.00 124,450.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 4.19 0.62
Average Latency (ms) 36.89 0.8
Maximum Latency (ms) 358.42 9.27
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 130.13 1.08

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 258.00 5,049.00
Queries per second 2,580.00 50,490.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 6.26 1.67
Average Latency (ms) 38.75 1.98
Maximum Latency (ms) 259.21 9.4
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 123.28 2.43

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 796.00 21,580.00
Queries per second 7,960.00 215,800.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.03 0.36
Average Latency (ms) 12.55 0.46
Maximum Latency (ms) 223.21 4.92
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 63.32 0.56

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 374,315.00 1,900,092.00
Queries per second 3,743,150.00 19,000,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.03 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 3489.66 240.35
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 124,757.00 210,450.00
Queries per second 1,247,570.00 2,104,500.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.08 0.05
Maximum Latency (ms) 168.4 0.97
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.12 0.06

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 2,721.00 8,142.00
Queries per second 27,210.00 81,420.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.36 0.37
Average Latency (ms) 3.67 1.23
Maximum Latency (ms) 34.76 3.35
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5 1.86

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 2,783.00 11,378.00
Queries per second 27,830.00 113,780.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.51 0.29
Average Latency (ms) 3.59 0.88
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.87 6.18
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5.28 1.14

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 454.00 21,383.00
Queries per second 4,540.00 213,830.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.46 0.37
Average Latency (ms) 22.01 0.47
Maximum Latency (ms) 345.88 4.39
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 102.97 0.62

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 263.00 21,598.00
Queries per second 2,630.00 215,980.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.54 0.36
Average Latency (ms) 38 0.46
Maximum Latency (ms) 442.22 11.24
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 110.66 0.62

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 1,343.00 156,197.00
Queries per second 13,430.00 1,561,970.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.06 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 7.46 0.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 266.15 5.53
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 34.33 0.1

Redis

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 35,701.54 51,098.62
PING_MBULK per Second 40,338.84 50,890.59
SET per Second 37,119.52 50,632.91
GET per Second 38,343.56 50,813.01
INCR per Second 36,710.72 50,632.91
LPUSH per Second 35,637.92 50,942.43
RPUSH per Second 34,891.84 51,020.41
LPOP per Second 33,400.13 51,229.51
RPOP per Second 32,615.79 51,493.30
SADD per Second 25,246.15 51,840.33
HSET per Second 28,645.09 52,301.26
SPOP per Second 30,138.64 52,410.90
ZADD per Second 31,735.96 51,921.08
ZPOPMIN per Second 34,770.52 51,948.05
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 17,424.64 35,410.77
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 7,678.13 20,881.19
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 5,190.49 15,010.51
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 4,344.61 12,975.22
MSET (10 keys) per Second 27,434.84 49,701.79

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
PING_INLINE0.870.60
PING_MBULK0.750.59
SET0.840.60
GET0.810.60
INCR0.850.60
LPUSH0.880.60
RPUSH0.900.60
LPOP0.940.60
RPOP0.960.60
SADD1.230.59
HSET1.090.59
SPOP1.030.59
ZADD0.980.60
ZPOPMIN0.890.59
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)1.840.89
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)3.921.54
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)5.582.16
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)6.572.42
MSET (10 keys)1.390.66

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

Based on the benchmark results, the DigitalOcean instance narrowly edges out the Vultr instance across a range of metrics, particularly excelling in CPU operations with an events per second of 1293.78 versus Vultr's 1436.31 and superior Redis throughput in operations per second. However, Vultr's MySQL bulk insert performance stands out with 188,840.73 TPS compared to DigitalOcean's 94,643.55 TPS, suggesting that for CPU-heavy and database-intensive tasks, Vultr might be more beneficial despite its lower RAM and CPU. DigitalOcean's slightly better CPU performance makes it a better choice for applications demanding high computational speed and efficiency.

From the friendly human:

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Providers & pricing

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

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