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've got brand new instances from DigitalOcean and Vultr to run some benchmarks on. Each instance was spun up with Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 and were created in the New York area (or close to it). Let's get into the numbers.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Last Benchmarked Thu, 01 Oct 2026 05:03:47 GMT Tue, 01 Sep 2026 05:13:32 GMT
Linux Distro Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version 7.0.0-31-generic 7.0.0-29-generic
MySQL Version 8.4.11-0ubuntu0.26.04.1 8.4.11-0ubuntu0.26.04.1
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 370.52 1,011.48
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.05 0.89
Average Latency (ms) 2.69 0.99
Maximum Latency (ms) 14.47 2.15
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.57 1.25

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Operations per second 1,545,738.03 5,186,399.33
Mebibytes per second 1,509.51 5,064.84
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 40.5 0.58
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Operations per second 2,729,753.92 5,103,338.99
Mebibytes per second 2,665.78 4,983.73
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 149.26 1.94
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Reads per Second 475.95 3,831.53
Writes per Second 317.30 2,554.36
Fsyncs per Second 1,017.81 8,179.23
Read Mebibytes per Second 7.44 59.87
Written Mebibytes per Second 4.96 39.91
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.55 0.07
Maximum Latency (ms) 115.24 2.28
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.08 0.21

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 2,875.76 1,735.94
Average Latency (ms) 2,899.88 1,756.88
Maximum Latency (ms) 2,919.44 1,766.31
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2,932.60 1,771.29

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 4,374.00 8,164.00
Queries per second 43,740.00 81,640.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.26 0.99
Average Latency (ms) 2.28 1.22
Maximum Latency (ms) 40.05 7.57
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.81 1.67

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 273.00 10,122.00
Queries per second 2,730.00 101,220.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 4.19 0.72
Average Latency (ms) 36.89 0.99
Maximum Latency (ms) 358.42 8.81
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 130.13 1.37

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 258.00 3,490.00
Queries per second 2,580.00 34,900.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 6.26 1.98
Average Latency (ms) 38.75 2.86
Maximum Latency (ms) 259.21 12.95
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 123.28 4.03

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 796.00 15,691.00
Queries per second 7,960.00 156,910.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.03 0.42
Average Latency (ms) 12.55 0.63
Maximum Latency (ms) 223.21 6.6
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 63.32 0.87

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 374,315.00 1,084,592.00
Queries per second 3,743,150.00 10,845,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.03 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 3489.66 581.84
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 124,757.00 225,553.00
Queries per second 1,247,570.00 2,255,530.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.08 0.04
Maximum Latency (ms) 168.4 1.59
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.12 0.07

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 2,721.00 5,528.00
Queries per second 27,210.00 55,280.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.36 0.64
Average Latency (ms) 3.67 1.81
Maximum Latency (ms) 34.76 5.91
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5 2.52

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 2,783.00 7,887.00
Queries per second 27,830.00 78,870.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.51 0.41
Average Latency (ms) 3.59 1.27
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.87 7.06
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5.28 1.89

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 454.00 16,393.00
Queries per second 4,540.00 163,930.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.46 0.42
Average Latency (ms) 22.01 0.61
Maximum Latency (ms) 345.88 5.96
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 102.97 0.84

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 263.00 17,497.00
Queries per second 2,630.00 174,970.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.54 0.4
Average Latency (ms) 38 0.57
Maximum Latency (ms) 442.22 4.42
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 110.66 0.74

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 1,343.00 145,609.00
Queries per second 13,430.00 1,456,090.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.06 0.03
Average Latency (ms) 7.46 0.07
Maximum Latency (ms) 266.15 4.46
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 34.33 0.12

Redis

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 35,701.54 64,892.93
PING_MBULK per Second 40,338.84 69,108.50
SET per Second 37,119.52 69,735.01
GET per Second 38,343.56 70,821.53
INCR per Second 36,710.72 63,371.36
LPUSH per Second 35,637.92 61,576.36
RPUSH per Second 34,891.84 64,808.82
LPOP per Second 33,400.13 61,842.92
RPOP per Second 32,615.79 61,312.08
SADD per Second 25,246.15 63,411.54
HSET per Second 28,645.09 63,331.22
SPOP per Second 30,138.64 63,371.36
ZADD per Second 31,735.96 63,979.53
ZPOPMIN per Second 34,770.52 65,231.57
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 17,424.64 36,456.43
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 7,678.13 17,639.79
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 5,190.49 11,498.22
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 4,344.61 9,613.54
MSET (10 keys) per Second 27,434.84 54,347.82

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
PING_INLINE0.870.49
PING_MBULK0.750.46
SET0.840.46
GET0.810.45
INCR0.850.51
LPUSH0.880.52
RPUSH0.900.50
LPOP0.940.52
RPOP0.960.53
SADD1.230.50
HSET1.090.51
SPOP1.030.50
ZADD0.980.50
ZPOPMIN0.890.49
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)1.840.92
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)3.921.83
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)5.582.82
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)6.573.27
MSET (10 keys)1.390.72

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The Vultr High Performance Intel (2 GB) instance outperforms the DigitalOcean Regular (2 GB) in key benchmarks, notably achieving significantly higher Redis RPS, such as 64892.93 compared to 48100.05 for the PING_INLINE test. The Vultr instance also excels in MySQL bulk inserts, recording 108353.15 TPS against DigitalOcean's 94643.55 TPS. These results suggest that the Vultr instance is better suited for CPU-intensive and memory-heavy applications, whereas the DigitalOcean instance might be more appropriate for budget-conscious users prioritizing cost over performance.

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)