VPS Showdown - February 2021 - DigitalOcean vs. Lightsail vs. Linode vs. UpCloud vs. Vultr
This post is old news – Get fresh benchmarks at VPS Showdown (daily updates!)
It was just last month that I had added a bit more information about the CPUs
that each provider was reporting. Wouldn't you know it, this month the Linode
instances tested were reporting AMD EPYC 7542 32 Core Processors, same as
UpCloud has been offering.
As one would expect, this change has propelled Linode quite a bit in terms of
these benchmarked performance metrics. I really can't wait to see how things
continue to heat up if/when other providers start to roll out similar hardware.
Similar to previous posts, I've spun up three instances on each provider at the
$5 per month price price in or around the New York / Newark region. Each
instance is running the latest Ubuntu LTS release and where applicable, the
results were averaged.
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 - All Instances
Intel(R) Xeon(R) Gold 6140 CPU @ 2.30GHz
Lightsail - All Instances
Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2676 v3 @ 2.40GHz
Linode - All Instances
AMD EPYC 7542 32-Core Processor
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
2,494.10
2,400.10
2,900.00
2,894.56
2,396.30
Cache Size (KB)
4,096.00
30,720.00
512.00
512.00
16,384.00
BogoMips
3,325.67
3,200.33
3,866.67
3,859.67
3,196.00
CPU
DigitalOcean
Lightsail
Linode
UpCloud
Vultr
Events per Second
963.23
762.67
1,631.78
1,670.46
750.38
Minimum (ms)
0.95
1.21
0.58
0.58
1.19
Average (ms)
1.04
1.31
0.61
0.60
1.33
Maximum (ms)
5.99
2.45
6.31
3.32
6.57
Memory
Read
DigitalOcean
Lightsail
Linode
UpCloud
Vultr
Ops per Second
4,465,638.37
527,919.23
5,026,915.15
5,569,502.47
3,363,197.62
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)
1.22
0.32
2.91
0.66
4.18
Write
DigitalOcean
Lightsail
Linode
UpCloud
Vultr
Ops per Second
4,329,643.88
527,901.96
5,059,798.29
5,555,934.21
3,330,281.68
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)
0.68
0.17
5.17
1.24
4.20
File I/O
DigitalOcean
Lightsail
Linode
UpCloud
Vultr
Reads per Second
2,915.42
1,165.01
2,524.55
2,981.80
1,622.89
Writes per Second
1,943.59
776.66
1,683.03
1,987.85
1,081.89
Fsyncs per Second
6,226.73
2,492.38
5,393.10
6,370.13
3,466.09
Minimum (ms)
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
Average (ms)
0.09
0.22
0.12
0.09
0.16
Maximum (ms)
16.97
10.82
18.45
108.41
17.51
MySQL
Read Only
DigitalOcean
Lightsail
Linode
UpCloud
Vultr
Transactions per Second
5,812.33
5,169.67
7,878.00
10,593.33
4,389.00
Queries per Second
92,997.33
82,714.67
126,048.00
169,493.33
70,224.00
Minimum (ms)
1.21
1.70
0.97
0.84
1.71
Average (ms)
1.73
1.93
1.27
0.94
2.31
Maximum (ms)
15.36
26.01
11.92
6.21
16.00
Write Only
DigitalOcean
Lightsail
Linode
UpCloud
Vultr
Transactions per Second
4,615.00
1,871.33
6,120.00
4,979.67
3,241.67
Queries per Second
27,690.00
11,228.00
36,720.00
29,878.00
19,450.00
Minimum (ms)
0.92
2.81
0.76
1.23
1.53
Average (ms)
2.22
5.38
2.13
2.02
3.26
Maximum (ms)
44.38
29.08
36.47
14.67
30.31
Read Write
DigitalOcean
Lightsail
Linode
UpCloud
Vultr
Transactions per Second
2,000.67
1,276.33
2,615.00
3,122.67
1,604.67
Queries per Second
40,013.33
25,526.67
52,300.00
62,453.33
32,093.33
Minimum (ms)
2.72
4.84
2.03
2.23
3.95
Average (ms)
5.19
7.85
4.42
3.20
6.43
Maximum (ms)
68.30
72.15
65.39
16.19
30.72
Redis
DigitalOcean
Lightsail
Linode
UpCloud
Vultr
PING_INLINE
42,065.01
45,531.02
79,530.13
107,523.43
32,804.83
PING_BULK
37,730.41
45,759.94
80,116.59
105,527.86
31,494.72
SET
39,402.83
45,760.23
81,418.92
110,732.60
32,276.10
GET
39,908.67
45,829.71
84,997.06
107,049.68
31,596.08
INCR
43,562.67
45,851.11
88,433.41
108,973.26
32,899.66
LPUSH
43,206.18
46,217.91
76,578.54
101,877.73
34,350.03
RPUSH
44,055.71
46,332.11
77,137.46
101,947.76
33,252.18
LPOP
44,844.19
46,268.19
73,829.66
100,102.51
33,757.67
RPOP
44,186.93
46,204.04
74,265.14
101,561.78
33,799.30
SADD
44,867.88
45,984.84
86,552.45
109,838.27
32,007.65
HSET
43,548.42
46,333.97
71,887.29
100,990.57
33,598.64
SPOP
42,400.73
46,211.22
79,597.99
106,901.03
32,053.17
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)
28,496.96
29,867.94
34,187.41
42,442.13
21,768.00
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)
11,448.61
13,104.48
11,086.41
21,762.64
9,002.17
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)
7,610.56
9,357.86
8,215.64
14,000.47
6,182.23
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)
7,210.28
7,696.70
6,614.15
11,415.54
5,230.29
MSET (10 keys)
41,246.28
37,481.60
40,226.54
55,140.78
26,890.51
Conclusion
If you found this post helpful in your quest for a new hosting provider and
you've decided to sign up, please use 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)