VPS Showdown VPS Showdown

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

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Same showdown, different day. Today I spun up fresh instances from DigitalOcean and Vultr and ran my world famous suite of benchmarking scripts. All instances were spun up with Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 and all resided in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Let's get into the numbers.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Last Benchmarked Sat, 01 Aug 2026 05:03:47 GMT Sat, 01 Aug 2026 05:12:47 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 $6.00
RAM (GB) 2 1
CPU Cores 1 1
Storage (TB) 50 25
Storage Type SSD NVMe
Transfer (TB) 2 2

Head-to-head

Category winners from the latest benchmarks.

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

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

CPU

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Vendor GenuineIntel GenuineIntel
Model Name DO-Regular Intel Xeon Processor (Cascadelake)
Clock Speed (MHz) 2,294.61 2,992.91
CPU Cache Size (KB) 4,096.00 16,384.00
BogoMips 4,589.21 5,985.82
Events per Second 337.24 1,085.49
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.07 0.87
Average Latency (ms) 2.96 0.92
Maximum Latency (ms) 7.98 1.53
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.74 1.04

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Operations per second 2,158,838.24 5,287,233.83
Mebibytes per second 2,108.24 5,163.31
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 7.22 0.53
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Operations per second 3,098,478.11 5,446,064.29
Mebibytes per second 3,025.86 5,318.42
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.23 0.39
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Reads per Second 897.65 3,945.14
Writes per Second 598.43 2,630.10
Fsyncs per Second 1,924.36 8,418.81
Read Mebibytes per Second 14.03 61.64
Written Mebibytes per Second 9.35 41.10
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.29 0.07
Maximum Latency (ms) 30.6 2.96
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.9 0.2

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 2,798.91 1,674.69
Average Latency (ms) 2,816.88 1,689.62
Maximum Latency (ms) 2,827.29 1,697.70
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2,828.87 1,708.63

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 4,209.00 9,332.00
Queries per second 42,090.00 93,320.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.24 0.93
Average Latency (ms) 2.37 1.07
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.8 15.52
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.91 1.32

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 720.00 11,031.00
Queries per second 7,200.00 110,310.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.26 0.69
Average Latency (ms) 13.89 0.9
Maximum Latency (ms) 898.41 11.47
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 11.24 1.23

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 914.00 4,749.00
Queries per second 9,140.00 47,490.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 5.04 1.79
Average Latency (ms) 10.93 2.1
Maximum Latency (ms) 399.05 7.52
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 12.98 2.57

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 2,481.00 18,923.00
Queries per second 24,810.00 189,230.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.76 0.39
Average Latency (ms) 4.02 0.53
Maximum Latency (ms) 209.08 10.45
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 6.43 0.68

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 603,677.00 1,375,842.00
Queries per second 6,036,770.00 13,758,420.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.02 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 768.14 345.61
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 111,711.00 263,886.00
Queries per second 1,117,110.00 2,638,860.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.03
Average Latency (ms) 0.09 0.04
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.67 2.47
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.14 0.05

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 2,616.00 6,167.00
Queries per second 26,160.00 61,670.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.4 0.53
Average Latency (ms) 3.82 1.62
Maximum Latency (ms) 19.97 6.42
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5.18 2.11

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 2,567.00 8,650.00
Queries per second 25,670.00 86,500.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.01 0.43
Average Latency (ms) 3.89 1.15
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.69 3.4
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5.57 1.52

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 1,815.00 18,825.00
Queries per second 18,150.00 188,250.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.76 0.4
Average Latency (ms) 5.5 0.53
Maximum Latency (ms) 1034.92 5.88
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 6.67 0.69

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 3,210.00 19,241.00
Queries per second 32,100.00 192,410.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.61 0.39
Average Latency (ms) 3.11 0.52
Maximum Latency (ms) 42.13 4.64
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5.09 0.65

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 18,558.00 200,203.00
Queries per second 185,580.00 2,002,030.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.03
Average Latency (ms) 0.54 0.05
Maximum Latency (ms) 146.02 3.61
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.91 0.08

Redis

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 32,310.18 70,472.16
PING_MBULK per Second 31,645.57 75,187.97
SET per Second 29,222.68 73,909.83
GET per Second 28,760.43 69,156.30
INCR per Second 34,411.56 59,952.04
LPUSH per Second 31,705.77 52,576.24
RPUSH per Second 30,883.26 68,634.18
LPOP per Second 30,892.80 59,171.59
RPOP per Second 33,602.15 53,219.80
SADD per Second 32,520.32 67,430.88
HSET per Second 34,459.00 63,734.86
SPOP per Second 35,997.12 43,859.65
ZADD per Second 29,197.08 43,365.13
ZPOPMIN per Second 29,403.12 49,285.36
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 14,295.93 36,982.25
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 6,915.15 19,992.00
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 4,855.55 12,827.09
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 4,463.09 10,901.56
MSET (10 keys) per Second 27,631.94 64,350.06

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
PING_INLINE0.960.45
PING_MBULK0.970.42
SET1.060.44
GET1.080.46
INCR0.910.53
LPUSH0.980.61
RPUSH0.990.47
LPOP1.000.55
RPOP0.940.62
SADD0.950.47
HSET0.910.51
SPOP0.860.72
ZADD1.070.75
ZPOPMIN1.050.64
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)2.230.90
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)4.291.61
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)5.912.58
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)6.472.88
MSET (10 keys)1.370.61

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The Vultr High Performance Intel (1 GB) instance outperforms the DigitalOcean Regular (2 GB) instance in overall performance, especially in CPU benchmark results where it achieves 1085.49 events per second compared to DigitalOcean's 337.24, and in Redis benchmarks where it handles significantly higher requests per second (e.g., 75187.97 RPS for PING_MBULK). This suggests Vultr's higher performance CPU is more effective for compute-intensive tasks, making it ideal for applications that require substantial processing power and low latency.

From the friendly human:

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Providers & pricing

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

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