Josh Sherman
Why not check out the latest comparison?
Starting to feel like I’m taking a virtual vacation as I test out different data centers each month. This month we step into Europe to explore Frankfurt.
Next month may end up taking us to Australia, but head’s up, not every provider has a data center there.
Usual setup this month, I spun up three $5 instances per provider ($6 for Vultr), each running Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (since Amazon still doesn’t support 20.04 LTS), ran my benchmarks and averaged the results where applicable.
Unfortunately, the SpeedTest command-line script gave me a ton of issues and didn’t properly collect data for about half of the tests. I suspect the server that I was targeting perhaps went down. Regardless, I dropped the SpeedTest section this month.
And away we go!
Overview
| DigitalOcean | Lightsail | Linode | UpCloud | Vultr | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Location | Frankfurt 1 | eu-central-1 | Frankfort, DE | DE-FRA1 | Frankfurt |
| RAM | 1 GB | 1 GB | 1 GB | 1 GB | 1 GB |
| CPU | 1 Core | 1 Core | 1 Core | 1 Core | 1 Core |
| Storage | 25 GB SSD | 40 GB SSD | 25 GB SSD | 25 GB SSD | 32 GB NVMe SSD |
| Transfer | 1 TB | 2 TB | 1 TB | 1 TB | 1 TB |
| Base Price | $5/month | $5/month | $5/month | $5/month | $6/month |
| Backups | $1/month | N/A | $2/month | $2/month | $1.20/month |
| Transfer Overage | $0.01/GB | $0.09/GB | $0.01/GB | $0.01/GB | $0.01/GB |
| Load Balancer | $10/month | $18/month | $10/month | N/A | $10/month |
| Block Storage | $0.10/GB | $0.10/GB | $0.10/GB | $0.223/GB | $0.10/GB |
| Object Storage | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
| Managed Databases | Yes | Yes | On 2020 Roadmap | No | No |
| 2FA/MFA | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| One-click Apps | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
| Custom Images | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
CPU Info
| DigitalOcean | Lightsail | Linode | UpCloud | Vultr | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CPU MHz | 2196.25 | 2400.01 | 2299.99 | 2894.56 | 3792.00 |
| Cache Size (KB) | 4096.00 | 30720.00 | 16384.00 | 512.00 | 16384.00 |
| BogoMips | 3192.67 | 3200.33 | 3066.33 | 3859.67 | 5056.33 |
CPU
| DigitalOcean | Lightsail | Linode | UpCloud | Vultr | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Events per Second | 795.82 | 858.81 | 773.63 | 1656.24 | 1256.05 |
| Minimum (ms) | 1.10 | 1.04 | 1.28 | 0.58 | 0.74 |
| Average (ms) | 1.29 | 1.16 | 1.29 | 0.60 | 0.80 |
| Maximum (ms) | 4.12 | 4.00 | 2.82 | 2.78 | 3.30 |
Memory (Read)
| DigitalOcean | Lightsail | Linode | UpCloud | Vultr | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ops per Second | 3176688.28 | 822112.13 | 3241157.14 | 5182076.59 | 5029845.12 |
| Minimum (ms) | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Average (ms) | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Maximum (ms) | 2.83 | 6.11 | 4.43 | 0.80 | 1.96 |
Memory (Write)
| DigitalOcean | Lightsail | Linode | UpCloud | Vultr | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ops per Second | 3164971.91 | 815397.37 | 3223926.16 | 5164292.75 | 5047882.14 |
| Minimum (ms) | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Average (ms) | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Maximum (ms) | 1.57 | 0.86 | 7.22 | 2.69 | 2.25 |
File I/O
| DigitalOcean | Lightsail | Linode | UpCloud | Vultr | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reads per Second | 1234.73 | 1504.94 | 1835.07 | 3013.54 | 4202.23 |
| Writes per Second | 823.15 | 1003.27 | 1223.37 | 2009.03 | 2801.48 |
| Fsyncs per Second | 2624.91 | 3207.67 | 3906.24 | 6418.68 | 8958.43 |
| Minimum (ms) | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Average (ms) | 0.21 | 0.17 | 0.14 | 0.09 | 0.06 |
| Maximum (ms) | 15.96 | 9.19 | 12.79 | 60.90 | 7.14 |
MySQL
| DigitalOcean | Lightsail | Linode | UpCloud | Vultr | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Transactions per Second | 1782.67 | 2685.67 | 3645.00 | 4779.67 | 5757.33 |
| Queries per Second | 35653.33 | 53713.33 | 72900.00 | 95593.33 | 115146.67 |
| Minimum (ms) | 2.77 | 2.10 | 1.87 | 1.28 | 1.15 |
| Average (ms) | 5.61 | 3.72 | 2.75 | 2.10 | 1.74 |
| Maximum (ms) | 55.47 | 28.71 | 31.19 | 75.10 | 56.23 |
Redis
| DigitalOcean | Lightsail | Linode | UpCloud | Vultr | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PING_INLINE | 35142.57 | 55192.17 | 39252.83 | 110829.70 | 54720.07 |
| PING_BULK | 36904.32 | 55648.73 | 39018.73 | 107958.88 | 53870.36 |
| SET | 38091.43 | 55341.75 | 39665.13 | 105347.49 | 54800.25 |
| GET | 37002.80 | 55941.07 | 38756.12 | 116131.84 | 48665.77 |
| INCR | 37029.76 | 56179.86 | 39298.63 | 110687.73 | 53370.25 |
| LPUSH | 37648.31 | 53930.28 | 39604.53 | 96161.02 | 55368.43 |
| RPUSH | 36745.21 | 55004.08 | 39683.38 | 102535.08 | 55388.51 |
| LPOP | 36751.45 | 54333.93 | 39422.63 | 96026.99 | 55056.53 |
| RPOP | 37530.17 | 55023.18 | 39371.35 | 103444.16 | 55351.11 |
| SADD | 37003.24 | 55644.28 | 39371.17 | 112630.07 | 54227.21 |
| HSET | 36827.00 | 53946.31 | 39396.93 | 97775.69 | 54544.89 |
| SPOP | 36741.67 | 56234.02 | 39257.20 | 113902.96 | 55454.06 |
| LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) | 20198.93 | 29932.49 | 19254.92 | 46290.87 | 32051.84 |
| LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) | 8440.43 | 11912.71 | 8209.52 | 16109.88 | 13435.43 |
| LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) | 5948.84 | 8621.06 | 5843.99 | 11635.45 | 10235.54 |
| LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) | 4524.29 | 6602.06 | 4444.69 | 8856.22 | 7992.06 |
| MSET (10 keys) | 28879.85 | 40072.73 | 35854.64 | 55070.02 | 47298.16 |
Apache Benchmark (against nginx on the servers)
| DigitalOcean | Lightsail | Linode | UpCloud | Vultr | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Requests per Second | 204.56 | 246.65 | 188.25 | 202.10 | 169.77 |
| Time per Request (ms) (mean) | 2706.51 | 2042.65 | 2746.70 | 2506.81 | 3065.32 |
| Transfer Rate (Kbyte/sec) | 171.59 | 206.91 | 157.92 | 169.54 | 142.41 |
Conclusion
Generally speaking, Vultr’s High Frequency plan has been out performing nearly every month in nearly every category, but in this particular data center, UpCloud actually put up a bit more of a fight.
I think the most interesting thing here was how well Lightsail performed. While not the fastest, they didn’t bring up the rear in every category as they usually do.
You may remember, these posts started as Linode vs. DigitalOcean because I wasn’t able to find a decent comparison many moons ago. They are still the providers that I’m the most interested in, since I have used them both and am a big fan of what each of them are doing over the years.
What’s been interesting to see is that while Linode did fall behind at some point, they’ve continued to stay the course, and as of late, it seems like DigitalOcean is either trending down or Linode is trending back up. Or it’s a combination of both.
- 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!
