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VPS Showdown - January 2021 - DigitalOcean vs. Lightsail vs. Linode vs. UpCloud vs. Vultr
New year, new VPS Showdown!
While I don't usually make big changes to these posts month to month, I do try
to refresh them every year or so. This year's improvements include commas (on
the larger numbers) and charts!
I've also made the decision to drop the High Frequency plan from Vultr in favor
of their less expensive plan that marries up with the other provider's price
point. Since I've avoided certain providers because they don't offer the same
price point, it didn't make sense to include the differently priced Vultr plan.
With regard to the data, there are a couple of metrics that I've decided to
drop. The ab benchmark, which was always at the mercy of my own Internet
connection and the Speed Test. The Speed Test may make a come back in the
future, but since not every provider has a server in the same geographical
region (looking at you AWS), it's hard to do an apples to apples comparison
since Speed Test only works against close servers. Close servers for one
provider may not be close for another.
As per usual, I've spun up 3 server instances and averaged the results.
Additional information about which distro and software versions have been moved
down to the overview section.
Also, for the sake of being a non-biased reviewer, I am no longer going to be
"picking a winner" and will be letting the data stand on it's own. If nothing
else, I'm tired of typing out "YMMV and you should weigh the needs of your
application against these benchmarks, yadda yadda blah blah blah" every month.
Overview
DigitalOcean
Lightsail
Linode
UpCloud
Vultr
Location
New York 1
Virginia, Zone A
Newark, NJ
US-NYC1
New York (NJ)
Distro
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
Kernel
5.4.0
5.4.0
5.4.0
5.4.0
5.4.0
MySQL
8.0.22
8.0.22
8.0.22
8.0.22
8.0.22
Redis
5.0.7
5.0.7
5.0.7
5.0.7
5.0.7
Base Price
$5/month
$5/month
$5/month
$5/month
$5/month
Hourly Price
$0.007/hour
$0.007/hour
$0.0075/hour
$0.007/hour
$0.007/hour
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
25 GB SSD
Transfer
1 TB
2 TB
1 TB
1 TB
1 TB
Transfer Overage
$0.01/GB
$0.09/GB
$0.01/GB
$0.01/GB
$0.01/GB
Backups
$1/month
$2/month
$2/month
$1/month
$1/month
DNS
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Firewall
Yes
Yes
in beta
Yes
Yes
Load Balancer
$10/month
$18/month
$10/month
No
$10/month
Block Storage
$0.1/GB
$0.1/GB
$0.1/GB
$0.223/GB
$0.1/GB
Object Storage
$5/month
$0.023/GB
$5/month
$5/month
$5/month
Managed Databases
Yes
Yes
No
No
No
2FA/MFA
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
One-click Apps
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Custom Images
Yes
No
No
Yes
Yes
Kubernetes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
No
Container Registry
Yes
Yes
No
No
No
CPU Info
Model Name
DigitalOcean - Instance #1
Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2650 v4 @ 2.20GHz
DigitalOcean - Instance #2
Intel(R) Xeon(R) Gold 6140 CPU @ 2.30GHz
DigitalOcean - Instance #3
Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2650L v3 @ 1.80GHz
Lightsail - All Instances
Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2676 v3 @ 2.40GHz
Linode - All Instances
Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2697 v4 @ 2.30GHz
UpCloud - All Instances
AMD EPYC 7542 32-Core Processor
Vultr - All Instances
Intel Core Processor (Broadwell, no TSX, IBRS)
DigitalOcean
Lightsail
Linode
UpCloud
Vultr
CPU MHz
2,164.69
2,400.11
2,300.00
2,894.56
2,396.30
Cache Size (KB)
4,096.00
30,720.00
16,384.00
512.00
16,384.00
BogoMips
2,666.33
3,200.33
3,066.33
3,859.67
3,192.33
CPU
DigitalOcean
Lightsail
Linode
UpCloud
Vultr
Events per Second
774.74
756.19
680.86
1,656.71
696.10
Minimum (ms)
1.28
1.17
1.35
0.58
1.20
Average (ms)
1.34
1.32
1.48
0.60
1.46
Maximum (ms)
2.19
2.03
8.58
3.31
8.07
Memory
Read
DigitalOcean
Lightsail
Linode
UpCloud
Vultr
Ops per Second
2,795,691.79
518,886.12
3,236,535.21
5,508,920.49
3,113,451.43
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)
0.59
0.19
5.36
0.24
5.01
Write
DigitalOcean
Lightsail
Linode
UpCloud
Vultr
Ops per Second
2,784,300.29
518,783.53
3,309,380.29
5,518,340.76
3,095,818.49
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)
0.66
4.11
2.92
0.24
7.37
File I/O
DigitalOcean
Lightsail
Linode
UpCloud
Vultr
Reads per Second
1,831.41
1,151.42
1,827.94
2,941.27
1,187.74
Writes per Second
1,220.88
767.58
1,218.62
1,960.82
791.82
Fsyncs per Second
3,912.04
2,458.69
3,904.29
6,277.97
2,543.86
Minimum (ms)
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
Average (ms)
0.16
0.23
0.14
0.09
0.25
Maximum (ms)
22.31
41.16
19.23
8.33
33.01
MySQL
Read Only
DigitalOcean
Lightsail
Linode
UpCloud
Vultr
Transactions per Second
4,845.00
4,967.67
4,673.00
9,986.00
4,345.00
Queries per Second
77,520.00
79,482.67
74,768.00
159,776.00
69,520.00
Minimum (ms)
1.77
1.77
1.76
0.85
1.65
Average (ms)
2.16
2.01
2.19
1.00
2.32
Maximum (ms)
13.14
27.90
12.81
8.37
19.07
Write Only
DigitalOcean
Lightsail
Linode
UpCloud
Vultr
Transactions per Second
3,262.33
1,830.00
4,276.67
4,729.67
2,659.33
Queries per Second
19,574.00
10,980.00
25,660.00
28,378.00
15,956.00
Minimum (ms)
1.58
2.82
1.29
1.22
1.66
Average (ms)
3.57
5.49
2.41
2.11
4.11
Maximum (ms)
59.84
66.92
17.23
16.78
42.90
Read Write
DigitalOcean
Lightsail
Linode
UpCloud
Vultr
Transactions per Second
1,483.33
1,158.00
1,833.33
2,971.33
1,350.00
Queries per Second
29,666.67
23,160.00
36,666.67
59,426.67
27,000.00
Minimum (ms)
4.14
5.30
3.73
2.28
4.00
Average (ms)
7.36
8.69
5.63
3.37
7.69
Maximum (ms)
74.32
92.03
24.35
15.02
54.58
Redis
DigitalOcean
Lightsail
Linode
UpCloud
Vultr
PING_INLINE
37,467.59
44,725.46
33,059.91
105,898.31
29,047.98
PING_BULK
35,346.20
44,392.14
32,380.69
104,245.26
27,620.23
SET
37,304.98
44,364.88
33,737.66
109,179.92
30,326.64
GET
36,177.53
44,484.49
33,286.67
105,763.57
30,147.23
INCR
36,529.12
44,546.42
33,823.21
108,389.54
30,653.05
LPUSH
37,067.48
45,184.20
34,941.31
101,703.12
30,878.10
RPUSH
37,160.57
45,009.44
34,508.68
101,129.41
30,698.56
LPOP
37,200.35
45,034.71
34,506.43
101,000.86
30,967.45
RPOP
37,043.53
44,970.25
34,107.09
103,404.06
30,817.55
SADD
37,243.79
44,281.57
33,413.33
105,949.33
29,377.70
HSET
37,255.24
45,225.38
34,684.87
99,664.97
30,599.20
SPOP
35,316.91
44,707.34
32,978.49
106,994.62
28,421.16
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)
23,561.11
28,754.26
17,517.02
42,870.39
20,503.34
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)
10,412.71
12,664.05
7,105.71
21,035.19
8,300.07
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)
7,358.50
9,114.44
5,499.13
13,687.73
6,022.17
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)
5,993.42
7,459.68
4,552.03
11,243.44
4,792.29
MSET (10 keys)
29,789.73
36,399.52
31,170.10
56,074.07
23,943.22
Conclusion
I hope you have enjoyed this month's VPS Showdown post. If you found this
information helpful and it helped sway your decision for a new VPS hosting
provider, please help me out by signing up via one of my referral links below:
If you have found these posts informative and helpful in searching for a new
hosting provider, please consider using one of the links below when signing up:
DigitalOcean, new accounts receive $200 in credit (good for 60 days)
Linode, new accounts receive $100 in credit (also good for 60 days)
UpCloud, new accounts receive €25 in credit (yes, that’s in Euros)
Vultr, new accounts also receive $100 in credit (good for only 14 days)