Josh Sherman
Why not check out the latest comparison?
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:
- 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!
