VPS Showdown VPS Showdown

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 spun up fresh instances from DigitalOcean and Vultr and ran some benchmarks. All instances were spun up with Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 and all resided in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Enough talk. Here's the data.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Last Benchmarked Sat, 01 Aug 2026 05:03:47 GMT Sat, 01 Aug 2026 05:13:32 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 Intel (2 GB)
Memory (read MiB/s)Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Disk I/O (MiB/s)Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
MySQL (read/write tps)Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Redis (GET/sec)Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Value (CPU events per $/mo)Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)

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

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 2,893.21
CPU Cache Size (KB) 4,096.00 16,384.00
BogoMips 4,589.21 5,786.41
Events per Second 337.24 999.67
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.07 0.9
Average Latency (ms) 2.96 1
Maximum Latency (ms) 7.98 2.64
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.74 1.23

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Operations per second 2,158,838.24 4,899,364.23
Mebibytes per second 2,108.24 4,784.54
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 7.22 0.71
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Operations per second 3,098,478.11 4,958,374.18
Mebibytes per second 3,025.86 4,842.16
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.23 1.78
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Reads per Second 897.65 3,921.65
Writes per Second 598.43 2,614.43
Fsyncs per Second 1,924.36 8,376.78
Read Mebibytes per Second 14.03 61.28
Written Mebibytes per Second 9.35 40.85
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.29 0.07
Maximum Latency (ms) 30.6 5.7
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.9 0.2

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 2,798.91 1,859.93
Average Latency (ms) 2,816.88 1,885.81
Maximum Latency (ms) 2,827.29 1,898.27
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2,828.87 1,903.57

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 4,209.00 9,027.00
Queries per second 42,090.00 90,270.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.24 0.96
Average Latency (ms) 2.37 1.11
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.8 2.56
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.91 1.44

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 720.00 8,431.00
Queries per second 7,200.00 84,310.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.26 0.75
Average Latency (ms) 13.89 1.18
Maximum Latency (ms) 898.41 9.18
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 11.24 1.76

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 914.00 3,610.00
Queries per second 9,140.00 36,100.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 5.04 2
Average Latency (ms) 10.93 2.77
Maximum Latency (ms) 399.05 15.04
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 12.98 3.75

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 2,481.00 14,727.00
Queries per second 24,810.00 147,270.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.76 0.42
Average Latency (ms) 4.02 0.68
Maximum Latency (ms) 209.08 4.61
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 6.43 0.94

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 603,677.00 1,201,092.00
Queries per second 6,036,770.00 12,010,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.02 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 768.14 387.67
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 111,711.00 228,161.00
Queries per second 1,117,110.00 2,281,610.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.03
Average Latency (ms) 0.09 0.04
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.67 1.57
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.14 0.06

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 2,616.00 4,700.00
Queries per second 26,160.00 47,000.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.4 0.78
Average Latency (ms) 3.82 2.12
Maximum Latency (ms) 19.97 9.85
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5.18 3.3

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 2,567.00 7,069.00
Queries per second 25,670.00 70,690.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.01 0.37
Average Latency (ms) 3.89 1.41
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.69 4.39
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5.57 2.26

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 1,815.00 15,156.00
Queries per second 18,150.00 151,560.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.76 0.41
Average Latency (ms) 5.5 0.66
Maximum Latency (ms) 1034.92 5.49
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 6.67 0.95

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 3,210.00 15,180.00
Queries per second 32,100.00 151,800.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.61 0.41
Average Latency (ms) 3.11 0.66
Maximum Latency (ms) 42.13 3.82
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5.09 0.9

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 18,558.00 149,333.00
Queries per second 185,580.00 1,493,330.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.03
Average Latency (ms) 0.54 0.07
Maximum Latency (ms) 146.02 2.9
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.91 0.12

Redis

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 32,310.18 45,998.16
PING_MBULK per Second 31,645.57 59,916.12
SET per Second 29,222.68 57,438.25
GET per Second 28,760.43 50,581.69
INCR per Second 34,411.56 57,240.98
LPUSH per Second 31,705.77 57,306.59
RPUSH per Second 30,883.26 52,631.58
LPOP per Second 30,892.80 52,854.12
RPOP per Second 33,602.15 54,794.52
SADD per Second 32,520.32 59,382.42
HSET per Second 34,459.00 57,636.89
SPOP per Second 35,997.12 54,854.64
ZADD per Second 29,197.08 58,892.82
ZPOPMIN per Second 29,403.12 65,189.05
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 14,295.93 35,075.41
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 6,915.15 14,297.97
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 4,855.55 10,139.93
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 4,463.09 8,959.77
MSET (10 keys) per Second 27,631.94 50,761.42

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
PING_INLINE0.960.70
PING_MBULK0.970.53
SET1.060.56
GET1.080.65
INCR0.910.56
LPUSH0.980.56
RPUSH0.990.61
LPOP1.000.62
RPOP0.940.60
SADD0.950.54
HSET0.910.56
SPOP0.860.58
ZADD1.070.55
ZPOPMIN1.050.48
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)2.230.95
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)4.292.25
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)5.913.16
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)6.473.47
MSET (10 keys)1.370.79

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

Based on the benchmark results, Vultr's High Performance Intel (2 GB) instance outperforms DigitalOcean's Regular (2 GB) instance across the board, especially in Redis operations where the Vultr instance achieves higher request per second (RPS) and significantly lower latencies. For example, the Vultr instance manages 59916.12 RPS with an average latency of 0.527 ms for the PING_MBULK test, compared to DigitalOcean's 31645.57 RPS with an average latency of 0.968 ms. For file I/O operations, the Vultr instance also shows superior throughput, with 61.28 MiB/s read and 40.85 MiB/s written compared to DigitalOcean's 14.03 MiB/s read and 9.35 MiB/s written. Therefore, the Vultr instance is clearly the better choice for demanding CPU-heavy or I/O-intensive applications where high performance and low latency are critical.

From the friendly human:

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Providers & pricing

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

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vs. DigitalOcean Regular (1 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Regular (1 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Premium Intel (1 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Premium Intel (2 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Premium Intel (1 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Premium AMD (1 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Premium Intel (2 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Premium AMD (2 GB)