$6 VPS Showdown - April 2021 - DigitalOcean - Premium Intel vs. DigitalOcean - Premium AMD vs. Vultr - High Frequency
This post is old news – Get fresh benchmarks at VPS Showdown (daily updates!)
By popular demand, I am now doing a $6 VPS Showdown to compare the "premium"
offerings from both DigitalOcean (which are fairly new) and Vultr (which have
been around for a while).
In the past, I did include Vultr's High Frequency plan in my $5 VPS
Showdowns, but it always felt a bit off to compare a plan that was 20%
more expensive than the rest of the bunch. Sure, they performed better in a lot
of ways, but wouldn't you expect that when you're paying the premium?
Similar to my other posts, I went ahead and spun up 3 instances with each
provider. In DigitalOcean's case, I spun up instances for both of their
"premium" CPU offerings.
Each instance is running Ubuntu 20.04 and I averaged the results accordingly.
Overview
DigitalOcean - Premium Intel
DigitalOcean - Premium AMD
Vultr - High Frequency
Location
New York 1
New York 3
New York (NJ)
Distro
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
Kernel
5.4.0
5.4.0
5.4.0
MySQL
8.0.23
8.0.23
8.0.23
Redis
5.0.7
5.0.7
5.0.7
Base Price
$6/month
$6/month
$6/month
Hourly Price
$0.009/hour
$0.009/hour
$0.009/hour
RAM
1 GB
1 GB
1 GB
CPU
1 Core
1 Core
1 Core
Storage
25 GB
25 GB
25 GB
Storage Type
NVMe
NVMe
NVMe
Transfer
1 TB
1 TB
1 TB
Transfer Overage
$0.01/GB
$0.01/GB
$0.01/GB
Backups
$1.2/month
$1.2/month
$1.2/month
DNS
Yes
Yes
Yes
Firewall
Yes
Yes
Yes
Load Balancer
$10/month
$10/month
$10/month
Block Storage
$0.1/GB
$0.1/GB
$0.1/GB
Object Storage
$5/month
$5/month
$5/month
Managed Databases
Yes
Yes
No
2FA/MFA
Yes
Yes
Yes
One-click Apps
Yes
Yes
Yes
Custom Images
Yes
Yes
Yes
Kubernetes
Yes
Yes
No
Container Registry
Yes
Yes
No
CPU Info
Model Name
DigitalOcean - Premium Intel - All Instances
DO-Premium-Intel
DigitalOcean - Premium AMD - All Instances
DO-Premium-AMD
Vultr - High Frequency - All Instances
Intel Core Processor (Skylake, IBRS)
DigitalOcean - Premium Intel
DigitalOcean - Premium AMD
Vultr - High Frequency
CPU MHz
2,494.11
1,996.25
3,696.00
Cache Size (KB)
4,096.00
512.00
16,384.00
BogoMips
3,325.67
2,661.67
4,927.67
While I'm sure they aren't up to no good, I always bothers me when a provider
obscures the underlying CPU information the way that DigitalOcean is these days.
CPU
DigitalOcean - Premium Intel
DigitalOcean - Premium AMD
Vultr - High Frequency
Events per Second
974.84
1,314.47
1,181.49
Minimum (ms)
0.95
0.68
0.82
Average (ms)
1.02
0.76
0.85
Maximum (ms)
2.11
3.42
3.45
Memory
Read
DigitalOcean - Premium Intel
DigitalOcean - Premium AMD
Vultr - High Frequency
Ops per Second
4,403,842.58
3,909,823.76
5,595,089.19
Minimum (ms)
0.00
0.00
0.00
Average (ms)
0.00
0.00
0.00
Maximum (ms)
0.23
0.76
0.33
Write
DigitalOcean - Premium Intel
DigitalOcean - Premium AMD
Vultr - High Frequency
Ops per Second
4,452,066.79
4,015,504.14
5,557,045.17
Minimum (ms)
0.00
0.00
0.00
Average (ms)
0.00
0.00
0.00
Maximum (ms)
0.63
1.85
0.35
File I/O
DigitalOcean - Premium Intel
DigitalOcean - Premium AMD
Vultr - High Frequency
Reads per Second
2,313.50
1,432.07
4,366.21
Writes per Second
1,542.33
954.68
2,910.79
Fsyncs per Second
4,941.38
3,062.58
9,323.75
Minimum (ms)
0.00
0.00
0.00
Average (ms)
0.12
0.19
0.06
Maximum (ms)
9.19
12.77
4.62
MySQL
Read Only
DigitalOcean - Premium Intel
DigitalOcean - Premium AMD
Vultr - High Frequency
Transactions per Second
6,038.00
5,141.00
8,163.00
Queries per Second
96,608.00
82,256.00
130,608.00
Minimum (ms)
1.27
1.39
1.04
Average (ms)
1.67
1.95
1.22
Maximum (ms)
14.46
10.69
7.94
Write Only
DigitalOcean - Premium Intel
DigitalOcean - Premium AMD
Vultr - High Frequency
Transactions per Second
3,982.00
2,226.33
8,617.33
Queries per Second
23,892.00
13,358.00
51,704.00
Minimum (ms)
1.03
1.37
0.67
Average (ms)
2.59
4.66
1.16
Maximum (ms)
18.51
25.12
7.98
Read Write
DigitalOcean - Premium Intel
DigitalOcean - Premium AMD
Vultr - High Frequency
Transactions per Second
1,828.67
1,356.33
3,530.33
Queries per Second
36,573.33
27,126.67
70,606.67
Minimum (ms)
3.14
3.67
1.94
Average (ms)
5.57
7.46
2.83
Maximum (ms)
31.67
31.47
14.32
Redis
DigitalOcean - Premium Intel
DigitalOcean - Premium AMD
Vultr - High Frequency
PING_INLINE
42,091.78
66,939.90
54,741.46
PING_BULK
41,960.62
65,019.08
54,025.02
SET
44,614.32
67,460.12
54,990.27
GET
42,979.66
68,870.40
54,201.25
INCR
42,642.47
71,145.02
55,175.35
LPUSH
43,002.11
65,165.26
54,876.24
RPUSH
44,014.24
64,902.74
55,400.03
LPOP
45,335.40
62,386.11
55,633.36
RPOP
44,716.85
68,014.15
55,952.98
SADD
43,552.36
70,470.46
55,225.86
HSET
44,875.59
66,660.21
56,115.41
SPOP
43,316.76
70,470.13
55,093.55
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)
28,250.70
32,232.07
38,101.55
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)
12,291.71
11,756.78
15,874.25
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)
8,892.80
7,979.11
11,196.87
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)
7,408.29
5,986.45
9,003.92
MSET (10 keys)
39,249.01
33,579.14
47,762.62
Conclusion
This was an interesting one as it was the first time benchmarking DigitalOcean's
new premium instances, and the first time this year that I had put my eyes on
Vultr's High Frequency offering.
As always, these benchmarks are a great starting point for making a decision on
a hosting provider, but it's also good to weigh out your own application or
website's needs.
If happened to have found this post helpful in your quest for a new hosting
provider, please be sure to 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)
