VPS Showdown VPS Showdown

DigitalOcean Regular (2 GB) vs. Vultr High Performance AMD (2 GB)

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Same showdown, different day. Today I've got brand new instances from DigitalOcean and Vultr and ran my world famous suite of benchmarking scripts. Each instance was spun up with Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 and were created in the New York area (or close to it). Without further ado, here's the results.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Last Benchmarked Sat, 01 Aug 2026 05:03:47 GMT Sat, 01 Aug 2026 05:12:02 GMT
Linux Distro Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version 7.0.0-27-generic 7.0.0-28-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 $12.00
RAM (GB) 2 2
CPU Cores 1 1
Storage (TB) 50 50
Storage Type SSD NVMe
Transfer (TB) 2 3

Head-to-head

Category winners from the latest benchmarks.

CategoryWinner
CPU (events/sec)Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Memory (read MiB/s)Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Disk I/O (MiB/s)Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
MySQL (read/write tps)Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Redis (GET/sec)Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Value (CPU events per $/mo)Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)

Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB) takes 6 of 6 categories.

CPU

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Vendor GenuineIntel AuthenticAMD
Model Name DO-Regular AMD EPYC-Genoa Processor
Clock Speed (MHz) 2,294.61 2,900.00
CPU Cache Size (KB) 4,096.00 1,024.00
BogoMips 4,589.21 5,800.00
Events per Second 337.24 4,289.74
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.07 0.22
Average Latency (ms) 2.96 0.23
Maximum Latency (ms) 7.98 3.69
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.74 0.25

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Operations per second 2,158,838.24 7,477,695.15
Mebibytes per second 2,108.24 7,302.44
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 7.22 0.24
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Operations per second 3,098,478.11 7,480,195.03
Mebibytes per second 3,025.86 7,304.88
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.23 0.26
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Reads per Second 897.65 3,878.89
Writes per Second 598.43 2,585.89
Fsyncs per Second 1,924.36 8,276.45
Read Mebibytes per Second 14.03 60.61
Written Mebibytes per Second 9.35 40.40
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.29 0.07
Maximum Latency (ms) 30.6 2.04
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.9 0.19

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 2,798.91 1,267.92
Average Latency (ms) 2,816.88 1,275.63
Maximum Latency (ms) 2,827.29 1,281.79
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2,828.87 1,280.93

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 4,209.00 14,172.00
Queries per second 42,090.00 141,720.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.24 0.64
Average Latency (ms) 2.37 0.7
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.8 3.22
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.91 0.78

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 720.00 12,730.00
Queries per second 7,200.00 127,300.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.26 0.62
Average Latency (ms) 13.89 0.78
Maximum Latency (ms) 898.41 4.66
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 11.24 0.94

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 914.00 6,314.00
Queries per second 9,140.00 63,140.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 5.04 1.39
Average Latency (ms) 10.93 1.58
Maximum Latency (ms) 399.05 7.43
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 12.98 1.76

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 2,481.00 20,594.00
Queries per second 24,810.00 205,940.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.76 0.39
Average Latency (ms) 4.02 0.48
Maximum Latency (ms) 209.08 3.1
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 6.43 0.57

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 603,677.00 2,395,217.00
Queries per second 6,036,770.00 23,952,170.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.02 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 768.14 192.09
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 111,711.00 364,617.00
Queries per second 1,117,110.00 3,646,170.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.02
Average Latency (ms) 0.09 0.03
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.67 0.91
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.14 0.04

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 2,616.00 11,020.00
Queries per second 26,160.00 110,200.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.4 0.31
Average Latency (ms) 3.82 0.91
Maximum Latency (ms) 19.97 3.29
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5.18 1.18

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 2,567.00 14,569.00
Queries per second 25,670.00 145,690.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.01 0.22
Average Latency (ms) 3.89 0.69
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.69 2.01
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5.57 0.89

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 1,815.00 19,450.00
Queries per second 18,150.00 194,500.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.76 0.42
Average Latency (ms) 5.5 0.51
Maximum Latency (ms) 1034.92 10.16
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 6.67 0.61

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 3,210.00 19,900.00
Queries per second 32,100.00 199,000.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.61 0.4
Average Latency (ms) 3.11 0.5
Maximum Latency (ms) 42.13 10.32
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5.09 0.59

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 18,558.00 265,546.00
Queries per second 185,580.00 2,655,460.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.02
Average Latency (ms) 0.54 0.04
Maximum Latency (ms) 146.02 2.58
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.91 0.06

Redis

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 32,310.18 48,146.37
PING_MBULK per Second 31,645.57 47,460.84
SET per Second 29,222.68 49,140.05
GET per Second 28,760.43 48,332.53
INCR per Second 34,411.56 47,080.98
LPUSH per Second 31,705.77 48,449.61
RPUSH per Second 30,883.26 47,961.63
LPOP per Second 30,892.80 46,794.57
RPOP per Second 33,602.15 47,103.16
SADD per Second 32,520.32 47,984.64
HSET per Second 34,459.00 47,961.63
SPOP per Second 35,997.12 46,838.41
ZADD per Second 29,197.08 48,947.62
ZPOPMIN per Second 29,403.12 47,619.05
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 14,295.93 38,226.30
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 6,915.15 24,906.60
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 4,855.55 18,073.38
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 4,463.09 16,404.20
MSET (10 keys) per Second 27,631.94 48,262.55

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
PING_INLINE0.960.63
PING_MBULK0.970.63
SET1.060.63
GET1.080.62
INCR0.910.65
LPUSH0.980.64
RPUSH0.990.65
LPOP1.000.68
RPOP0.940.66
SADD0.950.64
HSET0.910.65
SPOP0.860.64
ZADD1.070.64
ZPOPMIN1.050.63
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)2.230.82
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)4.291.30
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)5.911.69
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)6.471.95
MSET (10 keys)1.370.69

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The Vultr High Performance AMD instance outperforms the DigitalOcean Regular instance in nearly every benchmark, particularly in CPU processing with 4289.74 events per second compared to 337.24, and in Redis operations, where it handles significantly more requests per second with peak performance like 48947.62 RPS for ZADD. For use cases requiring high CPU and memory throughput, such as heavy computation tasks or high-traffic databases, Vultr's instance is clearly superior. Conversely, DigitalOcean's instance may be more suitable for less demanding, budget-conscious applications where moderate performance is sufficient.

From the friendly human:

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Providers & pricing

DigitalOcean overview Vultr overviewDigitalOcean Regular (2 GB) pricing Vultr High Performance AMD (2 GB) pricing

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