Josh Sherman
Why not check out the latest comparison?
It’s about that time again!
Even though the last week has been pretty hectic with travel, I’m still trying hard to make sure these VPS comparisons are showing up on the first Monday of the month (which lines up with my usual blogging schedule).
Seems the 5 buck pricing tier is still pretty popular. Nobody has been beating on my door asking for comparisons of different pricing tiers, so I’m going to just continue last month’s trend of reviewing the lowest price point that each of the current providers offer.
As always, the following benchmarks are the average across three VPS servers with each of the providers. Each box is running Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and the locations chosen were based on their proximity to the New York area which most of the providers offer.
Overview
| DigitalOcean | Lightsail | Linode | Vultr | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Location | New York 1 | Virginia, Zone A | Newark, NJ | New York (NJ) |
| RAM | 1 GB | 1 GB | 1 GB | 1 GB |
| CPU | 1 Core | 1 Core | 1 Core | 1 Core |
| SSD | 25 GB | 40 GB | 25 GB | 25 GB |
| Transfer | 1 TB | 2 TB | 1 TB | 1 TB |
CPU Info
| DigitalOcean | Lightsail | Linode | Vultr | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CPU MHz | 2294.61 | 2399.95 | 2433.33 | 2398.15 |
| Cache Size (KB) | 25344.00 | 30720.00 | 16384.00 | 16384.00 |
| BogoMips | 3059.67 | 3200.33 | 3333.00 | 3196.00 |
CPU
| DigitalOcean | Lightsail | Linode | Vultr | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Events per Second | 794.19 | 863.55 | 750.35 | 820.68 |
| Minimum (ms) | 0.98 | 1.07 | 1.25 | 1.13 |
| Average (ms) | 1.29 | 1.16 | 1.33 | 1.22 |
| Maximum (ms) | 3.56 | 3.72 | 2.27 | 7.15 |
Memory (Read)
| DigitalOcean | Lightsail | Linode | Vultr | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ops per Second | 3503034.90 | 824876.36 | 1553589.88 | 3450400.74 |
| Minimum (ms) | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Average (ms) | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Maximum (ms) | 0.30 | 0.20 | 0.76 | 2.85 |
Memory (Write)
| DigitalOcean | Lightsail | Linode | Vultr | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ops per Second | 3619458.94 | 824663.80 | 1557095.18 | 3349987.46 |
| Minimum (ms) | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Average (ms) | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Maximum (ms) | 0.88 | 2.03 | 1.15 | 6.45 |
File I/O
| DigitalOcean | Lightsail | Linode | Vultr | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reads per Second | 959.77 | 1205.07 | 1587.86 | 1721.03 |
| Writes per Second | 639.81 | 803.37 | 1058.57 | 1147.32 |
| Fsyncs per Second | 2039.77 | 2567.17 | 3379.15 | 3668.12 |
| Minimum (ms) | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Average (ms) | 0.33 | 0.22 | 0.17 | 0.15 |
| Maximum (ms) | 14.15 | 51.79 | 21.63 | 64.27 |
MySQL
| DigitalOcean | Lightsail | Linode | Vultr | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Transactions per Second | 1619.33 | 2065.00 | 2331.33 | 2522.33 |
| Queries per Second | 32386.67 | 41300.00 | 46626.67 | 50446.67 |
| Minimum (ms) | 3.34 | 2.93 | 2.34 | 2.22 |
| Average (ms) | 6.88 | 4.87 | 4.62 | 3.99 |
| Maximum (ms) | 51.69 | 48.84 | 44.60 | 45.82 |
Speed Test
| DigitalOcean | Lightsail | Linode | Vultr | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Distance (km) | 2434.95 | 2090.30 | 2421.10 | 2391.13 |
| Latency (ms) | 48.824 | 43.630 | 50.615 | 46.368 |
| Download (Mbit/s) | 1315.66 | 204.70 | 252.16 | 290.51 |
| Upload (Mbit/s) | 512.84 | 302.04 | 316.96 | 543.03 |
Apache Benchmark (against nginx on the servers)
| DigitalOcean | Lightsail | Linode | Vultr | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Requests per Second | 263.23 | 264.89 | 251.15 | 220.30 |
| Time per Request (ms) (mean) | 1900.03 | 1888.72 | 2009.03 | 2303.17 |
| Transfer Rate (Kbytes/sec) | 220.82 | 222.21 | 210.68 | 184.80 |
Conclusion
As always, these benchmarks should be analyzed based on your own needs and not necessarily taken at face value.
If we are to talk about them at face value, Lightsail excels in regard to the storage and bandwidth offering compared to the rest of the pack.
The specifications of the CPU were fairly consistent across the board with Lightsail processing the most requests per second.
For memory, both reads and writes, DigitalOcean crushed it with Vultr not far behind. Worth noting, even with Vultr putting up great numbers, their max execution times were fairly abysmal compared to the rest.
Vultr’s file I/O was ahead but consistent with the memory benchmarks, the maximum execution time was was up there. The MySQL benchmarks also saw Vultr ahead of the pack for the number of queries and just squeaking out on transactions.
The speed test was dominated by DigitalOcean for downloads and coming in second
against Vultr for uploads. The ever controversial ab benchmark was Lightsail
pull ahead with Linode not far behind.
If you found these benchmarks helpful and you’re planning on pulling the trigger on a new server soon, please take a moment to do so via one of my referral links.
- DigitalOcean, new accounts receive $100 in credit (good for 60 days).
- Linode, new accounts receive $100 in credit (good for 60 days).
- UpCloud, new accounts receive $25 in credit.
- Vultr, new accounts receive $100 in credit (good for 30 days).
Or if you’re feeling really generous, show off your favorite tech stack by picking up a shirt!
