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