DigitalOcean Regular (2 GB) vs. Vultr High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)

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Fresh benchmarks coming at ya. Today I've spun up 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). Without further ado, here's the results.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Last Benchmarked Tue, 12 May 2026 23:00:52 GMT Sun, 10 May 2026 19:00:52 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 $24.00
RAM (GB) 2 4
CPU Cores 1 2
Storage (TB) 50 100
Storage Type SSD NVMe
Transfer (TB) 2 5

CPU

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Vendor GenuineIntel AuthenticAMD
Model Name DO-Regular AMD EPYC-Genoa Processor
Clock Speed (MHz) 2,294.61 2,899.97
CPU Cache Size (KB) 4,096.00 1,024.00
BogoMips 4,589.21 5,799.93
Events per Second 408.72 4,658.11
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.98 0.21
Average Latency (ms) 2.44 0.21
Maximum Latency (ms) 30.57 0.53
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.1 0.23

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Operations per second 1,633,276.41 7,575,653.76
Mebibytes per second 1,595.00 7,398.10
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.35 0.11
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Operations per second 1,592,941.48 7,568,193.98
Mebibytes per second 1,555.61 7,390.81
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 Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Reads per Second 1,584.78 7,987.51
Writes per Second 1,056.52 5,325.00
Fsyncs per Second 3,385.97 17,048.51
Read Mebibytes per Second 24.76 124.80
Written Mebibytes per Second 16.51 83.20
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.16 0.03
Maximum Latency (ms) 20.31 6.39
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.51 0.1

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Minimum Latency (ms) 2,434.32 486.79
Average Latency (ms) 2,473.55 633.21
Maximum Latency (ms) 2,489.41 662.57
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2,493.86 657.93

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 4,752.00 10,078.00
Queries per second 47,520.00 100,780.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.23 0.73
Average Latency (ms) 2.1 0.99
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.76 2.1
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.66 1.04

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 1,930.00 9,972.00
Queries per second 19,300.00 99,720.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.65 0.69
Average Latency (ms) 5.18 1
Maximum Latency (ms) 56.83 2.46
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 7.98 1.27

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 1,306.00 4,931.00
Queries per second 13,060.00 49,310.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 4.6 1.69
Average Latency (ms) 7.65 2.03
Maximum Latency (ms) 28.54 4.6
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 10.09 2.35

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 3,148.00 16,374.00
Queries per second 31,480.00 163,740.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.72 0.45
Average Latency (ms) 3.17 0.61
Maximum Latency (ms) 32.67 2.27
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.41 0.73

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 669,209.00 3,065,092.00
Queries per second 6,692,090.00 30,650,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.02 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 772.1 202.5
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 136,020.00 228,801.00
Queries per second 1,360,200.00 2,288,010.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.02
Average Latency (ms) 0.07 0.04
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.33 0.76
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.11 0.05

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 3,617.00 14,971.00
Queries per second 36,170.00 149,710.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.82 0.24
Average Latency (ms) 2.76 0.67
Maximum Latency (ms) 12.27 2.18
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.82 0.84

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 3,087.00 14,347.00
Queries per second 30,870.00 143,470.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.67 0.22
Average Latency (ms) 3.23 0.7
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.52 1.42
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5.18 0.89

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 2,586.00 15,756.00
Queries per second 25,860.00 157,560.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.8 0.46
Average Latency (ms) 3.86 0.63
Maximum Latency (ms) 45.13 2.03
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 6.21 0.83

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 3,094.00 16,201.00
Queries per second 30,940.00 162,010.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.83 0.45
Average Latency (ms) 3.23 0.62
Maximum Latency (ms) 35.75 1.59
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.65 0.77

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 19,562.00 163,015.00
Queries per second 195,620.00 1,630,150.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.02
Average Latency (ms) 0.51 0.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 32.94 3.17
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.02 0.08

Redis

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
PING_INLINE per Second 39,729.84 57,372.34
PING_MBULK per Second 42,176.30 58,719.91
SET per Second 40,833.00 59,276.82
GET per Second 34,590.11 59,031.88
INCR per Second 35,410.77 59,136.61
LPUSH per Second 39,184.95 58,616.65
RPUSH per Second 36,509.68 58,754.41
LPOP per Second 36,791.76 58,962.27
RPOP per Second 38,834.95 59,241.71
SADD per Second 35,727.05 58,892.82
HSET per Second 35,790.98 58,616.65
SPOP per Second 39,478.88 59,206.63
ZADD per Second 38,850.04 59,031.88
ZPOPMIN per Second 40,338.84 59,311.98
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 17,461.15 50,479.56
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 7,711.29 34,164.67
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 4,860.50 26,364.36
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 4,094.67 23,952.09
MSET (10 keys) per Second 32,041.01 59,031.88

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
PING_INLINE0.830.46
PING_MBULK0.780.44
SET0.820.44
GET0.940.44
INCR0.930.43
LPUSH0.850.44
RPUSH0.910.44
LPOP0.920.44
RPOP0.870.43
SADD0.920.44
HSET0.930.44
SPOP0.840.43
ZADD0.860.44
ZPOPMIN0.820.43
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)2.050.51
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)4.590.75
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)7.190.96
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)8.421.06
MSET (10 keys)1.120.44

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The DigitalOcean instance shows strong performance in memory operations and MySQL benchmarks, with high read and write operations per second, but it lags behind in CPU benchmarks and Redis throughput. The Vultr High Performance AMD instance clearly outpaces the DigitalOcean one in nearly every benchmark, showing significantly higher Redis and CPU performance metrics, as well as superior file I/O operations. However, it slightly underperforms in MySQL operations compared to the DigitalOcean instance. For CPU-intensive and I/O-heavy workloads, the Vultr instance is the clear winner due to its higher throughput and lower latencies. Conversely, if your use case leans more towards memory-bound tasks or requires specific MySQL performance, the DigitalOcean instance provides better metrics, albeit with a lower overall throughput compared to Vultr.

From the friendly human:

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