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

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My friend, I'm so glad you're here! Today I've spun up some brand new instance from DigitalOcean and Vultr and ran my world famous suite of benchmarking scripts. All instances were running Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and were created in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Without further ado, here's the results.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Last Benchmarked Tue, 12 May 2026 23:00:52 GMT Tue, 12 May 2026 01:00:52 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 $6.00
RAM (GB) 2 1
CPU Cores 1 1
Storage (TB) 50 32
Storage Type SSD NVMe
Transfer (TB) 2 1

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 3,792.00
CPU Cache Size (KB) 4,096.00 16,384.00
BogoMips 4,589.21 7,583.99
Events per Second 408.72 1,616.36
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.98 0.59
Average Latency (ms) 2.44 0.62
Maximum Latency (ms) 30.57 3.14
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.1 0.65

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Operations per second 1,633,276.41 8,026,985.33
Mebibytes per second 1,595.00 7,838.85
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.35 0.47
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Operations per second 1,592,941.48 8,033,949.18
Mebibytes per second 1,555.61 7,845.65
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.53 0.12
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Reads per Second 1,584.78 4,461.17
Writes per Second 1,056.52 2,974.11
Fsyncs per Second 3,385.97 9,517.47
Read Mebibytes per Second 24.76 69.71
Written Mebibytes per Second 16.51 46.47
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.16 0.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 20.31 1.54
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.51 0.18

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 2,434.32 1,110.31
Average Latency (ms) 2,473.55 1,120.71
Maximum Latency (ms) 2,489.41 1,126.03
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2,493.86 1,129.24

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 4,752.00 10,658.00
Queries per second 47,520.00 106,580.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.23 0.88
Average Latency (ms) 2.1 0.94
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.76 6.61
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.66 0.99

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 1,930.00 9,937.00
Queries per second 19,300.00 99,370.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.65 0.66
Average Latency (ms) 5.18 1.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 56.83 4.42
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 7.98 1.3

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 1,306.00 4,639.00
Queries per second 13,060.00 46,390.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 4.6 1.78
Average Latency (ms) 7.65 2.15
Maximum Latency (ms) 28.54 4.96
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 10.09 2.43

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 3,148.00 17,259.00
Queries per second 31,480.00 172,590.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.72 0.37
Average Latency (ms) 3.17 0.58
Maximum Latency (ms) 32.67 2.37
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.41 0.73

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 669,209.00 2,103,967.00
Queries per second 6,692,090.00 21,039,670.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.02 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 772.1 263.1
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 136,020.00 241,647.00
Queries per second 1,360,200.00 2,416,470.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.07 0.04
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.33 5.32
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.11 0.05

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 3,617.00 11,030.00
Queries per second 36,170.00 110,300.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.82 0.3
Average Latency (ms) 2.76 0.91
Maximum Latency (ms) 12.27 3.55
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.82 1.16

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 3,087.00 11,228.00
Queries per second 30,870.00 112,280.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.67 0.33
Average Latency (ms) 3.23 0.89
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.52 3.36
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5.18 1.16

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 2,586.00 16,444.00
Queries per second 25,860.00 164,440.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.8 0.37
Average Latency (ms) 3.86 0.61
Maximum Latency (ms) 45.13 2.17
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 6.21 0.83

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 3,094.00 16,975.00
Queries per second 30,940.00 169,750.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.83 0.37
Average Latency (ms) 3.23 0.59
Maximum Latency (ms) 35.75 5.14
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.65 0.77

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 19,562.00 153,274.00
Queries per second 195,620.00 1,532,740.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.51 0.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 32.94 2.78
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.02 0.09

Redis

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 39,729.84 56,116.72
PING_MBULK per Second 42,176.30 56,689.34
SET per Second 40,833.00 56,338.03
GET per Second 34,590.11 56,369.79
INCR per Second 35,410.77 55,991.04
LPUSH per Second 39,184.95 55,096.42
RPUSH per Second 36,509.68 55,679.29
LPOP per Second 36,791.76 55,524.71
RPOP per Second 38,834.95 55,865.92
SADD per Second 35,727.05 56,211.35
HSET per Second 35,790.98 56,148.23
SPOP per Second 39,478.88 56,274.62
ZADD per Second 38,850.04 55,493.89
ZPOPMIN per Second 40,338.84 56,980.06
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 17,461.15 38,328.86
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 7,711.29 21,385.80
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 4,860.50 14,682.13
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 4,094.67 12,550.20
MSET (10 keys) per Second 32,041.01 52,631.58

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
PING_INLINE0.830.57
PING_MBULK0.780.56
SET0.820.57
GET0.940.56
INCR0.930.57
LPUSH0.850.58
RPUSH0.910.57
LPOP0.920.58
RPOP0.870.58
SADD0.920.57
HSET0.930.57
SPOP0.840.57
ZADD0.860.58
ZPOPMIN0.820.56
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)2.050.90
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)4.591.63
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)7.192.45
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)8.422.89
MSET (10 keys)1.120.65

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

Comparing the two VPS configurations, Vultr's High Frequency Intel (1 GB) performs significantly better in most benchmark metrics, especially in CPU operations where it achieves higher RPS for Redis commands, slightly better latency across the board, and higher throughput for file I/O operations. DigitalOcean's Regular (2 GB) configuration shows more balanced performance with slightly more memory capacity and lower monthly cost, but it lags behind in CPU benchmarks and has higher file I/O latencies. For workloads that are CPU-intensive and benefit from high throughput, such as database operations or high concurrency Redis tasks, Vultr's instance is superior. For scenarios requiring more RAM for memory-intensive tasks or where cost efficiency is a primary concern, DigitalOcean's instance might be more appropriate.

From the friendly human:

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