I got a few bits of feedback recently that I took into consideration before doing this month’s benchmarks.
The first bit was to include some additional price points and plan types instead of just the $5 plan. The other (opposing) bit of feedback was to start including some content that factors in the previous month’s benchmarks.
As much as I’d love to go through and include every price point and the different types of instances (dedicated CPU and such), it does end up being a lot of work. I really love the idea of starting to show some month over month data at some point, so it made sense to just stay the course and keep reviewing the $5 and $6 plans that are available.
This particular month’s post marks the 18th birthday of Linode which did include some awesome announcements, but nothing that directly affects these particular posts (no additional storage or anything like that) aside from the availability of custom images. They are definitely moving forward with their infrastructure and offerings, which is really exciting.
Incidentally, Vultr is doing a bit of gauging of the market with a little survey asking folks if they are interested in managed databases. Given that some other folks in the space already offer this (DigitalOcean) and some have been talking about it for a while (Linode), it would make sense for Vultr to venture into that.
As per usual, this month’s benchmarks are the average results from three instances from each provider at the $5 and $6 price points. Each server is running Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and is in or around the Newark / New York City area.
$5 VPS Showdown – DigitalOcean vs. Lightsail vs. Linode vs. UpCloud vs. Vultr
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
8.0.25
8.0.25
8.0.25
8.0.25
8.0.25
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
40 GB
25 GB
25 GB
25 GB
Storage Type
SSD
SSD
SSD
SSD
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
Yes
Yes
Yes
Kubernetes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
No
Container Registry
Yes
Yes
No
No
No
CPU Info
Model Name
DigitalOcean – All Instances
DO-Regular
Lightsail – All Instances
Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2676 v3 @ 2.40GHz
Linode – Instance #1
AMD EPYC 7601 32-Core Processor
Linode – Instance #2
AMD EPYC 7542 32-Core Processor
Linode – Instance #3
AMD EPYC 7601 32-Core Processor
UpCloud – All Instances
AMD EPYC 7542 32-Core Processor
Vultr – Instance #1
Intel Core Processor (Haswell, no TSX, IBRS)
Vultr – Instance #2
Intel Core Processor (Broadwell, no TSX, IBRS)
Vultr – Instance #3
Intel Core Processor (Broadwell, no TSX, IBRS)
DigitalOcean
Lightsail
Linode
UpCloud
Vultr
CPU MHz
2,262.04
2,399.96
2,433.33
2,894.56
2,398.15
Cache Size (KB)
4,096.00
30,720.00
512.00
512.00
16,384.00
BogoMips
2,861.33
3,199.67
2,933.33
3,859.67
3,196.00
CPU
DigitalOcean
Lightsail
Linode
UpCloud
Vultr
Events per Second
850.50
761.80
1,364.84
1,644.84
727.61
Minimum (ms)
1.19
1.21
0.69
0.58
1.24
Average (ms)
1.27
1.31
0.75
0.61
1.37
Maximum (ms)
3.28
2.37
6.20
1.83
9.35
Memory
Read
DigitalOcean
Lightsail
Linode
UpCloud
Vultr
Ops per Second
4,006,511.04
525,673.18
4,276,172.88
5,391,832.40
3,342,613.45
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)
1.49
0.23
4.13
1.60
5.43
Write
DigitalOcean
Lightsail
Linode
UpCloud
Vultr
Ops per Second
4,029,049.60
526,785.19
4,347,479.73
5,439,379.75
3,318,692.25
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)
0.98
0.19
4.74
0.25
4.58
File I/O
DigitalOcean
Lightsail
Linode
UpCloud
Vultr
Reads per Second
1,753.88
997.07
2,263.36
2,509.97
1,449.02
Writes per Second
1,169.25
664.71
1,508.88
1,673.30
965.99
Fsyncs per Second
3,742.55
2,135.13
4,835.75
5,361.39
3,096.06
Minimum (ms)
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
Average (ms)
0.17
0.26
0.12
0.10
0.18
Maximum (ms)
11.20
7.29
20.57
9.24
9.83
MySQL
Read Only
DigitalOcean
Lightsail
Linode
UpCloud
Vultr
Transactions per Second
5,636.33
4,938.33
5,734.67
8,565.67
3,798.00
Queries per Second
90,181.33
79,013.33
91,754.67
137,050.67
60,768.00
Minimum (ms)
1.59
1.71
1.46
0.91
1.85
Average (ms)
2.01
2.02
1.86
1.17
2.65
Maximum (ms)
19.01
22.19
24.05
7.17
19.31
Write Only
DigitalOcean
Lightsail
Linode
UpCloud
Vultr
Transactions per Second
3,412.67
1,646.67
5,032.00
3,970.33
2,024.67
Queries per Second
20,476.00
9,880.00
30,192.00
23,822.00
12,148.00
Minimum (ms)
1.71
3.21
1.06
1.38
2.04
Average (ms)
3.92
6.09
2.17
2.52
5.66
Maximum (ms)
22.92
29.38
23.06
13.06
29.88
Read Write
DigitalOcean
Lightsail
Linode
UpCloud
Vultr
Transactions per Second
1,592.33
1,111.33
2,219.00
2,392.00
1,067.33
Queries per Second
31,846.67
22,226.67
44,380.00
47,840.00
21,346.67
Minimum (ms)
4.37
5.69
2.94
2.58
5.12
Average (ms)
8.27
9.00
4.83
4.18
10.02
Maximum (ms)
33.76
75.53
32.94
20.65
36.45
Redis
DigitalOcean
Lightsail
Linode
UpCloud
Vultr
PING_INLINE
42,026.31
45,221.93
70,410.52
93,471.55
31,828.41
PING_BULK
39,244.33
45,284.31
65,437.97
86,586.58
31,077.01
SET
39,836.84
45,551.31
72,541.65
94,746.42
32,457.33
GET
41,232.72
45,345.46
68,276.66
90,025.10
31,532.83
INCR
42,471.17
45,621.53
69,604.83
93,210.35
31,047.01
LPUSH
43,694.69
45,746.75
63,307.20
93,957.98
30,753.43
RPUSH
44,366.80
45,671.37
66,435.59
95,097.63
32,062.98
LPOP
43,438.61
45,553.48
63,397.99
96,409.57
32,297.27
RPOP
42,034.41
45,746.29
66,931.37
98,373.68
32,573.53
SADD
40,690.82
45,672.75
71,326.73
93,884.39
30,705.71
HSET
42,060.27
45,771.18
63,589.18
94,652.62
32,494.80
SPOP
41,160.20
45,463.21
69,815.39
91,232.34
31,173.81
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)
27,471.30
29,762.53
30,120.54
36,238.71
20,488.84
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)
11,340.89
12,882.89
9,251.86
11,251.62
9,004.24
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)
8,075.35
9,327.05
6,795.24
8,824.82
6,162.60
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)
6,722.96
7,604.19
5,483.66
7,350.64
4,932.90
MSET (10 keys)
34,644.19
38,004.63
33,081.59
48,128.60
25,688.02
$6 VPS Showdown – DigitalOcean – Premium Intel vs. DigitalOcean – Premium AMD vs. Vultr – High Frequency6 VPS Showdown
Overview
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD
Vultr – High Frequency
Location
New York 1
New York 1
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
8.0.25
8.0.25
8.0.25
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
2,494.12
1,998.75
3,696.00
Cache Size (KB)
4,096.00
512.00
16,384.00
BogoMips
3,325.67
2,666.33
4,927.67
CPU
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD
Vultr – High Frequency
Events per Second
1,002.36
1,190.90
1,171.34
Minimum (ms)
0.91
0.77
0.82
Average (ms)
1.00
0.84
0.85
Maximum (ms)
3.53
2.42
6.97
Memory
Read
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD
Vultr – High Frequency
Ops per Second
4,624,815.12
3,608,892.48
5,472,757.36
Minimum (ms)
0.00
0.00
0.00
Average (ms)
0.00
0.00
0.00
Maximum (ms)
3.89
1.66
1.53
Write
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD
Vultr – High Frequency
Ops per Second
4,600,171.47
3,512,584.95
5,567,196.48
Minimum (ms)
0.00
0.00
0.00
Average (ms)
0.00
0.00
0.00
Maximum (ms)
0.45
5.59
0.19
File I/O
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD
Vultr – High Frequency
Reads per Second
2,133.06
1,454.86
4,245.00
Writes per Second
1,422.02
969.91
2,830.00
Fsyncs per Second
4,557.96
3,108.59
9,061.99
Minimum (ms)
0.00
0.00
0.00
Average (ms)
0.13
0.18
0.06
Maximum (ms)
10.25
13.42
4.73
MySQL
Read Only
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD
Vultr – High Frequency
Transactions per Second
6,601.00
4,304.00
7,530.67
Queries per Second
105,616.00
68,864.00
120,490.67
Minimum (ms)
1.24
1.67
1.06
Average (ms)
1.53
2.33
1.33
Maximum (ms)
8.84
11.33
11.54
Write Only
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD
Vultr – High Frequency
Transactions per Second
4,301.33
2,854.33
7,886.00
Queries per Second
25,808.00
17,126.00
47,316.00
Minimum (ms)
0.95
1.33
0.68
Average (ms)
2.35
3.66
1.26
Maximum (ms)
17.41
22.09
20.02
Read Write
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD
Vultr – High Frequency
Transactions per Second
2,053.00
1,382.33
3,148.67
Queries per Second
41,060.00
27,646.67
62,973.33
Minimum (ms)
2.86
4.10
2.02
Average (ms)
4.92
7.44
3.18
Maximum (ms)
26.65
40.70
15.88
Redis
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD
Vultr – High Frequency
PING_INLINE
47,577.32
55,370.97
52,969.58
PING_BULK
47,367.38
56,207.78
53,580.91
SET
48,827.62
57,034.60
54,994.35
GET
48,202.12
54,635.85
54,717.83
INCR
48,625.61
58,436.12
55,258.38
LPUSH
49,058.17
51,230.95
55,786.98
RPUSH
48,397.61
52,871.31
55,872.81
LPOP
49,304.74
50,373.80
53,720.69
RPOP
49,344.24
52,903.91
54,721.71
SADD
48,891.29
60,792.75
51,002.01
HSET
50,422.41
52,037.30
50,789.60
SPOP
48,043.92
59,904.26
53,057.73
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)
31,086.57
25,126.21
36,956.23
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)
12,884.48
10,170.15
15,173.58
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)
9,621.29
6,302.73
9,858.55
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)
8,034.33
5,336.38
8,680.28
MSET (10 keys)
43,839.86
28,967.91
46,971.78
Conclusion
Similar to last month, this month’s results felt a bit all over the place. The one thing that’s starting to become very clear is that with everybody’s recently improvements, Lightsail, while offering more storage, really isn’t able to compete in terms of raw performance.
If you happened to have found this post helpful, and you’re panning to pull the trigger on a new hosting provider soon, please do me a huge favor and 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)
Vultr, new accounts also receive $100 in credit (good for only 14 days)
UpCloud, new accounts receive €25 in credit (yes, that’s in Euros)
