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

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Welcome to another round of the VPS Showdown. Today I've spun up brand new instance from DigitalOcean and Vultr to run some benchmarks on. All instances were spun up with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and all resided in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Without further ado, here's the results.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Last Benchmarked Tue, 12 May 2026 23:00:52 GMT Tue, 12 May 2026 19:00:53 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 $12.00
RAM (GB) 2 2
CPU Cores 1 1
Storage (TB) 50 50
Storage Type SSD NVMe
Transfer (TB) 2 3

CPU

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Vendor GenuineIntel GenuineIntel
Model Name DO-Regular Intel Xeon Processor (Cascadelake)
Clock Speed (MHz) 2,294.61 2,893.17
CPU Cache Size (KB) 4,096.00 16,384.00
BogoMips 4,589.21 5,786.33
Events per Second 408.72 1,113.54
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.98 0.83
Average Latency (ms) 2.44 0.9
Maximum Latency (ms) 30.57 2.82
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.1 1.03

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Operations per second 1,633,276.41 5,137,826.95
Mebibytes per second 1,595.00 5,017.41
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.35 2.23
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Operations per second 1,592,941.48 5,077,308.02
Mebibytes per second 1,555.61 4,958.31
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.53 0.68
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Reads per Second 1,584.78 4,329.69
Writes per Second 1,056.52 2,886.46
Fsyncs per Second 3,385.97 9,246.36
Read Mebibytes per Second 24.76 67.65
Written Mebibytes per Second 16.51 45.10
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.16 0.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 20.31 4.84
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.51 0.18

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 2,434.32 1,646.72
Average Latency (ms) 2,473.55 1,659.26
Maximum Latency (ms) 2,489.41 1,671.13
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2,493.86 1,678.14

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 4,752.00 8,418.00
Queries per second 47,520.00 84,180.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.23 1.08
Average Latency (ms) 2.1 1.19
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.76 4.43
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.66 1.47

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 1,930.00 7,510.00
Queries per second 19,300.00 75,100.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.65 0.79
Average Latency (ms) 5.18 1.33
Maximum Latency (ms) 56.83 6.46
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 7.98 2

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 1,306.00 3,001.00
Queries per second 13,060.00 30,010.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 4.6 2.36
Average Latency (ms) 7.65 3.33
Maximum Latency (ms) 28.54 19.36
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 10.09 4.74

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 3,148.00 14,317.00
Queries per second 31,480.00 143,170.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.72 0.43
Average Latency (ms) 3.17 0.69
Maximum Latency (ms) 32.67 4.44
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.41 0.9

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 669,209.00 1,171,967.00
Queries per second 6,692,090.00 11,719,670.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.02 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 772.1 386.31
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 136,020.00 211,601.00
Queries per second 1,360,200.00 2,116,010.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.07 0.05
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.33 1.44
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.11 0.07

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 3,617.00 5,968.00
Queries per second 36,170.00 59,680.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.82 0.58
Average Latency (ms) 2.76 1.67
Maximum Latency (ms) 12.27 4.57
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.82 2.43

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 3,087.00 7,670.00
Queries per second 30,870.00 76,700.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.67 0.39
Average Latency (ms) 3.23 1.3
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.52 3.13
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5.18 1.76

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 2,586.00 14,254.00
Queries per second 25,860.00 142,540.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.8 0.42
Average Latency (ms) 3.86 0.7
Maximum Latency (ms) 45.13 3.63
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 6.21 1.03

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 3,094.00 13,755.00
Queries per second 30,940.00 137,550.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.83 0.42
Average Latency (ms) 3.23 0.73
Maximum Latency (ms) 35.75 7.01
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.65 1.01

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 19,562.00 117,129.00
Queries per second 195,620.00 1,171,290.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.51 0.08
Maximum Latency (ms) 32.94 4.27
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.02 0.16

Redis

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 39,729.84 44,033.47
PING_MBULK per Second 42,176.30 41,203.13
SET per Second 40,833.00 41,597.34
GET per Second 34,590.11 41,771.09
INCR per Second 35,410.77 39,354.59
LPUSH per Second 39,184.95 45,871.56
RPUSH per Second 36,509.68 43,802.02
LPOP per Second 36,791.76 45,228.40
RPOP per Second 38,834.95 44,286.98
SADD per Second 35,727.05 42,992.26
HSET per Second 35,790.98 42,052.14
SPOP per Second 39,478.88 43,084.88
ZADD per Second 38,850.04 46,425.25
ZPOPMIN per Second 40,338.84 44,306.60
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 17,461.15 27,816.41
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 7,711.29 14,634.86
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 4,860.50 9,436.63
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 4,094.67 8,049.59
MSET (10 keys) per Second 32,041.01 42,771.60

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
PING_INLINE0.830.74
PING_MBULK0.780.78
SET0.820.79
GET0.940.78
INCR0.930.84
LPUSH0.850.71
RPUSH0.910.74
LPOP0.920.72
RPOP0.870.74
SADD0.920.75
HSET0.930.77
SPOP0.840.75
ZADD0.860.70
ZPOPMIN0.820.73
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)2.051.23
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)4.592.42
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)7.193.76
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)8.424.43
MSET (10 keys)1.120.79

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

After analyzing the benchmarks for both instances, it's clear that the Vultr High Performance Intel (2 GB) instance excels in terms of raw performance, especially in CPU-intensive and high-throughput tasks, as evidenced by its higher RPS (requests per second) and lower latencies across various Redis operations. It also shows superior file I/O throughput and lower latencies in memory operations compared to the DigitalOcean Regular (2 GB) instance. However, the DigitalOcean instance shows slightly better fairness and lower latencies in specific memory operations. Depending on the specific use case, the Vultr instance is ideal for CPU-heavy, high-I/O workloads, while the DigitalOcean instance may be more suitable for applications needing tight memory performance and lower variability in response times.

From the friendly human:

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