DigitalOcean Regular (2 GB) vs. Vultr High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 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. All instances were running Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and were created in the New York area (or close to it). Let's get into the numbers.
Overview
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Last Benchmarked | Tue, 12 May 2026 23:00:52 GMT | Tue, 12 May 2026 22:00:52 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 | $18.00 |
| RAM (GB) | 2 | 2 |
| CPU Cores | 1 | 2 |
| Storage (TB) | 50 | 80 |
| Storage Type | SSD | NVMe |
| Transfer (TB) | 2 | 3 |
CPU
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| 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 | 7,584.00 |
| Events per Second | 408.72 | 1,595.33 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.98 | 0.61 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 2.44 | 0.63 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 30.57 | 3.82 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 4.1 | 0.67 |
Memory
Memory Read
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Operations per second | 1,633,276.41 | 8,018,179.72 |
| Mebibytes per second | 1,595.00 | 7,830.25 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 3.35 | 0.23 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
Memory Write
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Operations per second | 1,592,941.48 | 8,026,354.64 |
| Mebibytes per second | 1,555.61 | 7,838.24 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 5.53 | 0.23 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
File I/O
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Reads per Second | 1,584.78 | 4,761.31 |
| Writes per Second | 1,056.52 | 3,174.20 |
| Fsyncs per Second | 3,385.97 | 10,161.05 |
| Read Mebibytes per Second | 24.76 | 74.40 |
| Written Mebibytes per Second | 16.51 | 49.60 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.16 | 0.05 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 20.31 | 2.86 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0.51 | 0.17 |
Mutex
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 2,434.32 | 315.69 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 2,473.55 | 517.12 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 2,489.41 | 555.49 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 2,493.86 | 559.50 |
MySQL
MySQL Read-only
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 4,752.00 | 10,846.00 |
| Queries per second | 47,520.00 | 108,460.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 1.23 | 0.85 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 2.1 | 0.92 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 5.76 | 2.7 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 2.66 | 0.97 |
MySQL Write-only
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 1,930.00 | 9,835.00 |
| Queries per second | 19,300.00 | 98,350.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 2.65 | 0.66 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 5.18 | 1.02 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 56.83 | 2.23 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 7.98 | 1.3 |
MySQL Read/Write
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 1,306.00 | 5,208.00 |
| Queries per second | 13,060.00 | 52,080.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 4.6 | 1.59 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 7.65 | 1.92 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 28.54 | 3.66 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 10.09 | 2.18 |
MySQL INSERT
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 3,148.00 | 18,348.00 |
| Queries per second | 31,480.00 | 183,480.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 1.72 | 0.37 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 3.17 | 0.54 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 32.67 | 2.54 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 4.41 | 0.68 |
MySQL Bulk INSERT
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 669,209.00 | 2,540,842.00 |
| Queries per second | 6,692,090.00 | 25,408,420.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.02 | 0 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 772.1 | 200.43 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
MySQL SELECT
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 136,020.00 | 245,434.00 |
| Queries per second | 1,360,200.00 | 2,454,340.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.04 | 0.03 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.07 | 0.04 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 3.33 | 1.11 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0.11 | 0.05 |
MySQL SELECT (Random Points)
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 3,617.00 | 12,340.00 |
| Queries per second | 36,170.00 | 123,400.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.82 | 0.22 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 2.76 | 0.81 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 12.27 | 2.5 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 3.82 | 1.03 |
MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 3,087.00 | 10,685.00 |
| Queries per second | 30,870.00 | 106,850.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.67 | 0.39 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 3.23 | 0.94 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 8.52 | 2.9 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 5.18 | 1.21 |
MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 2,586.00 | 17,447.00 |
| Queries per second | 25,860.00 | 174,470.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 1.8 | 0.38 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 3.86 | 0.57 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 45.13 | 1.78 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 6.21 | 0.75 |
MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 3,094.00 | 16,733.00 |
| Queries per second | 30,940.00 | 167,330.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 1.83 | 0.37 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 3.23 | 0.6 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 35.75 | 1.55 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 4.65 | 0.77 |
MySQL DELETE
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 19,562.00 | 158,104.00 |
| Queries per second | 195,620.00 | 1,581,040.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.04 | 0.03 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.51 | 0.06 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 32.94 | 3.94 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 3.02 | 0.07 |
Redis
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| PING_INLINE per Second | 39,729.84 | 85,397.09 |
| PING_MBULK per Second | 42,176.30 | 86,355.79 |
| SET per Second | 40,833.00 | 86,430.43 |
| GET per Second | 34,590.11 | 86,355.79 |
| INCR per Second | 35,410.77 | 86,058.52 |
| LPUSH per Second | 39,184.95 | 87,336.24 |
| RPUSH per Second | 36,509.68 | 87,642.41 |
| LPOP per Second | 36,791.76 | 87,336.24 |
| RPOP per Second | 38,834.95 | 87,032.20 |
| SADD per Second | 35,727.05 | 85,763.29 |
| HSET per Second | 35,790.98 | 87,260.03 |
| SPOP per Second | 39,478.88 | 87,489.06 |
| ZADD per Second | 38,850.04 | 87,336.24 |
| ZPOPMIN per Second | 40,338.84 | 86,355.79 |
| LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second | 17,461.15 | 65,061.81 |
| LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second | 7,711.29 | 36,832.41 |
| LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second | 4,860.50 | 26,171.16 |
| LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second | 4,094.67 | 23,337.22 |
| MSET (10 keys) per Second | 32,041.01 | 89,525.52 |
Redis Average Latency (ms)
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| PING_INLINE | 0.83 | 0.31 |
| PING_MBULK | 0.78 | 0.30 |
| SET | 0.82 | 0.30 |
| GET | 0.94 | 0.30 |
| INCR | 0.93 | 0.30 |
| LPUSH | 0.85 | 0.29 |
| RPUSH | 0.91 | 0.29 |
| LPOP | 0.92 | 0.29 |
| RPOP | 0.87 | 0.30 |
| SADD | 0.92 | 0.30 |
| HSET | 0.93 | 0.30 |
| SPOP | 0.84 | 0.29 |
| ZADD | 0.86 | 0.29 |
| ZPOPMIN | 0.82 | 0.30 |
| LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) | 2.05 | 0.39 |
| LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) | 4.59 | 0.69 |
| LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) | 7.19 | 0.97 |
| LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) | 8.42 | 1.09 |
| MSET (10 keys) | 1.12 | 0.29 |
Conclusion
From the friendly robots:
The DigitalOcean instance demonstrates solid performance for CPU-bound and memory-intensive tasks, with respectable Redis benchmarks, particularly in complex operations like LRANGE, though it shows slower performance in large data retrieval tasks. The Vultr instance, equipped with 2 cores and higher clock speed, significantly outperforms in overall Redis operations, suggesting better handling of high concurrency and bulk operations. The Vultr server also showcases superior file I/O performance and MySQL benchmarks, indicating it's better suited for I/O-heavy workloads and larger data management tasks. Overall, the DigitalOcean instance might be preferred for applications that require stable, predictable performance with less emphasis on high concurrency, while the Vultr instance excels in environments demanding high throughput and handling large datasets efficiently.
From the friendly human:
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