The landscape of Virtual Private Servers is ever changing and evolving. Gone are
the days of providers offering just servers. Many providers offer a wide range
of managed services in addition to traditional VPS offerings.
Maybe I’m too much of an old dog, but I’m finding the more recent trend of
offering multiple CPU architectures and nebulous marketing jargon to describe
the plans a bit off putting.
Vultr has continued further down this path by introducing “High Performance”
plans (both Intel and AMD) in addition to their “High Frequency” (just Intel).
Regardless of my curmudgeonly attitude towards this lack of simplicity, I’m
going to include these new offerings as part of the $6 section of this post 🙂
Also worth noting for this month, DigitalOcean recently released “Serverless
Functions” (similar to AWS Lambdas) in beta.
As always, I’ve went ahead and spun up three server instances with each provider
at each of the available price points in the $5 to $6 range. Each instance is
running the current Ubuntu LTS version (20.04) and the results are averaged
where appropriate.
$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 | 8.0.28 | 8.0.28 | 8.0.28 | 8.0.28 | 8.0.28 |
| 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 | Yes | 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 | MongoDB, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Redis | MySQL, PostgreSQL | MySQL | MySQL, PostgreSQL | 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 | Yes |
| Container Registry | Yes | Yes | No | No | No |
| Container Hosting | Yes | Yes | No | No | No |
| Serverless Functions | 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 7601 32-Core Processor |
| Linode – Instance #3 | AMD EPYC 7542 32-Core Processor |
| UpCloud – All Instances | AMD EPYC 7542 32-Core Processor |
| Vultr – Instance #1 | Intel Core Processor (Broadwell, no TSX, IBRS) |
| Vultr – Instance #2 | Intel Core Processor (Broadwell, no TSX, IBRS) |
| Vultr – Instance #3 | Intel Core Processor (Haswell, no TSX, IBRS) |
| DigitalOcean | Lightsail | Linode | UpCloud | Vultr | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CPU MHz | 2,494.12 | 2,400.09 | 2,433.33 | 2,894.56 | 2,400.00 |
| Cache Size (KB) | 4,096.00 | 30,720.00 | 512.00 | 512.00 | 16,384.00 |
| BogoMips | 3,325.67 | 3,200.33 | 3,399.67 | 3,859.67 | 3,199.67 |
CPU
| DigitalOcean | Lightsail | Linode | UpCloud | Vultr | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Events per Second | 922.64 | 751.07 | 1,253.04 | 1,672.84 | 750.40 |
| Minimum (ms) | 0.95 | 1.16 | 0.70 | 0.58 | 1.17 |
| Average (ms) | 1.09 | 1.33 | 0.83 | 0.60 | 1.33 |
| Maximum (ms) | 2.29 | 11.14 | 7.90 | 1.05 | 8.07 |
Memory
Read
| DigitalOcean | Lightsail | Linode | UpCloud | Vultr | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ops per Second | 4,369,557.57 | 517,395.47 | 3,695,153.06 | 5,589,210.90 | 3,668,693.60 |
| 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) | 0.46 | 4.82 | 8.55 | 0.24 | 4.29 |
Write
| DigitalOcean | Lightsail | Linode | UpCloud | Vultr | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ops per Second | 4,125,143.11 | 502,823.63 | 3,418,191.56 | 5,614,680.91 | 3,642,877.83 |
| 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) | 1.29 | 2.89 | 5.75 | 1.48 | 2.78 |
File I/O
| DigitalOcean | Lightsail | Linode | UpCloud | Vultr | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reads per Second | 1,743.19 | 997.90 | 1,621.95 | 2,662.09 | 1,684.34 |
| Writes per Second | 1,162.12 | 665.27 | 1,081.25 | 1,774.71 | 1,122.89 |
| Fsyncs per Second | 3,722.16 | 2,134.61 | 3,468.53 | 5,685.07 | 3,601.42 |
| Minimum (ms) | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Average (ms) | 0.15 | 0.26 | 0.17 | 0.10 | 0.16 |
| Maximum (ms) | 11.36 | 14.14 | 19.79 | 9.71 | 13.18 |
MySQL
Read Only
| DigitalOcean | Lightsail | Linode | UpCloud | Vultr | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Transactions per Second | 5,441.33 | 4,588.67 | 4,198.33 | 8,399.00 | 4,323.33 |
| Queries per Second | 87,061.33 | 73,418.67 | 67,173.33 | 134,384.00 | 69,173.33 |
| Minimum (ms) | 1.26 | 1.72 | 1.78 | 0.96 | 1.77 |
| Average (ms) | 1.93 | 2.18 | 2.77 | 1.19 | 2.31 |
| Maximum (ms) | 20.65 | 34.40 | 69.27 | 9.96 | 20.22 |
Write Only
| DigitalOcean | Lightsail | Linode | UpCloud | Vultr | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Transactions per Second | 3,174.00 | 1,616.00 | 2,959.33 | 4,440.67 | 3,122.33 |
| Queries per Second | 19,044.00 | 9,696.00 | 17,756.00 | 26,644.00 | 18,734.00 |
| Minimum (ms) | 1.22 | 3.24 | 1.39 | 1.33 | 1.56 |
| Average (ms) | 3.33 | 6.23 | 4.44 | 2.25 | 3.22 |
| Maximum (ms) | 22.62 | 41.27 | 38.40 | 14.95 | 31.97 |
Read Write
| DigitalOcean | Lightsail | Linode | UpCloud | Vultr | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Transactions per Second | 1,726.67 | 1,094.00 | 1,138.00 | 2,551.00 | 1,482.33 |
| Queries per Second | 34,533.33 | 21,880.00 | 22,760.00 | 51,020.00 | 29,646.67 |
| Minimum (ms) | 3.04 | 5.42 | 4.68 | 2.47 | 4.07 |
| Average (ms) | 5.84 | 9.15 | 10.82 | 3.92 | 6.76 |
| Maximum (ms) | 23.72 | 60.66 | 82.62 | 19.78 | 58.64 |
Redis
| DigitalOcean | Lightsail | Linode | UpCloud | Vultr | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PING_INLINE | 41,018.45 | 45,503.58 | 47,108.08 | 68,880.60 | 36,080.40 |
| PING_BULK | 40,474.86 | 45,161.48 | 44,618.86 | 64,559.29 | 32,869.36 |
| SET | 42,875.13 | 45,214.88 | 47,813.18 | 69,314.92 | 35,889.17 |
| GET | 43,993.63 | 45,144.22 | 50,719.97 | 67,381.84 | 35,063.23 |
| INCR | 43,637.23 | 45,059.30 | 54,523.07 | 68,715.76 | 35,644.40 |
| LPUSH | 42,622.90 | 45,387.11 | 40,575.15 | 73,970.19 | 36,580.37 |
| RPUSH | 43,192.03 | 45,265.56 | 44,145.49 | 72,797.92 | 37,467.81 |
| LPOP | 40,941.63 | 45,137.52 | 38,048.64 | 71,727.54 | 37,153.76 |
| RPOP | 39,034.33 | 45,390.67 | 41,099.52 | 71,588.16 | 36,637.78 |
| SADD | 40,119.36 | 45,043.98 | 52,090.67 | 67,961.60 | 35,464.56 |
| HSET | 43,910.59 | 45,668.26 | 45,959.65 | 73,030.21 | 37,466.12 |
| SPOP | 41,689.06 | 45,254.95 | 53,886.69 | 66,652.25 | 34,906.65 |
| LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) | 25,251.05 | 29,785.83 | 19,648.15 | 32,333.99 | 24,699.86 |
| LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) | 11,116.74 | 12,874.86 | 7,412.59 | 12,096.20 | 10,102.74 |
| LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) | 7,845.00 | 9,340.82 | 5,551.22 | 9,516.40 | 6,989.01 |
| LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) | 6,504.51 | 7,622.34 | 4,465.80 | 7,778.69 | 5,618.42 |
| MSET (10 keys) | 33,784.36 | 37,131.94 | 24,537.53 | 69,241.47 | 27,204.32 |
$6 VPS Showdown – DigitalOcean – Premium Intel vs. DigitalOcean – Premium AMD vs. Vultr – High Frequency Intel vs. Vultr – High Performance AMD vs. Vultr – High Performance Intel
Overview
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel | DigitalOcean – Premium AMD | Vultr – High Frequency Intel | Vultr – High Performance AMD | Vultr – High Performance Intel | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Location | New York 1 | New York 1 | New York (NJ) | New York (NJ) | 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 | 8.0.28 | 8.0.28 | 8.0.28 | 8.0.28 | 8.0.28 |
| Redis | 5.0.7 | 5.0.7 | 5.0.7 | 5.0.7 | 5.0.7 |
| Base Price | $6/month | $6/month | $6/month | $6/month | $6/month |
| Hourly Price | $0.009/hour | $0.009/hour | $0.009/hour | $0.009/hour | $0.009/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 | 25 GB | 25 GB | 25 GB | 25 GB |
| Storage Type | NVMe | NVMe | NVMe | NVMe | NVMe |
| Transfer | 1 TB | 1 TB | 1 TB | 1 TB | 1 TB |
| Transfer Overage | $0.01/GB | $0.01/GB | $0.01/GB | $0.01/GB | $0.01/GB |
| Backups | $1.2/month | $1.2/month | $1.2/month | $1.2/month | $1.2/month |
| DNS | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Firewall | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Load Balancer | $10/month | $10/month | $10/month | $10/month | $10/month |
| Block Storage | $0.1/GB | $0.1/GB | $0.1/GB | $0.1/GB | $0.1/GB |
| Object Storage | $5/month | $5/month | $5/month | $5/month | $5/month |
| Managed Databases | MongoDB, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Redis | MongoDB, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Redis | No | No | No |
| 2FA/MFA | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| One-click Apps | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Custom Images | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Kubernetes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Container Registry | Yes | Yes | No | No | No |
| Container Hosting | Yes | Yes | No | No | No |
| Serverless Functions | Yes | Yes | No | No | No |
CPU Info
| Model Name | |
|---|---|
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel – All Instances | DO-Premium-Intel |
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD – All Instances | DO-Premium-AMD |
| Vultr – High Frequency Intel – All Instances | Intel Core Processor (Skylake, IBRS) |
| Vultr – High Performance AMD – All Instances | AMD EPYC-Rome Processor |
| Vultr – High Performance Intel – All Instances | Intel Xeon Processor (Cascadelake) |
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel | DigitalOcean – Premium AMD | Vultr – High Frequency Intel | Vultr – High Performance AMD | Vultr – High Performance Intel | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CPU MHz | 2,494.13 | 1,996.24 | 3,696.00 | 1,996.25 | 2,959.71 |
| Cache Size (KB) | 4,096.00 | 512.00 | 16,384.00 | 512.00 | 16,384.00 |
| BogoMips | 3,325.67 | 2,661.67 | 4,927.67 | 2,661.67 | 3,924.00 |
CPU
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel | DigitalOcean – Premium AMD | Vultr – High Frequency Intel | Vultr – High Performance AMD | Vultr – High Performance Intel | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Events per Second | 1,009.36 | 1,232.48 | 1,412.51 | 3,470.55 | 1,106.55 |
| Minimum (ms) | 0.95 | 0.68 | 0.70 | 0.28 | 0.85 |
| Average (ms) | 0.99 | 0.81 | 0.72 | 0.29 | 0.90 |
| Maximum (ms) | 3.01 | 6.49 | 3.17 | 3.37 | 5.39 |
Memory
Read
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel | DigitalOcean – Premium AMD | Vultr – High Frequency Intel | Vultr – High Performance AMD | Vultr – High Performance Intel | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ops per Second | 4,426,735.70 | 3,482,598.76 | 6,780,005.90 | 5,240,188.07 | 5,101,104.18 |
| 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) | 0.34 | 2.19 | 0.19 | 3.39 | 2.84 |
Write
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel | DigitalOcean – Premium AMD | Vultr – High Frequency Intel | Vultr – High Performance AMD | Vultr – High Performance Intel | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ops per Second | 4,640,999.42 | 3,691,434.03 | 6,810,275.63 | 5,242,333.33 | 5,148,469.65 |
| 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) | 0.27 | 2.50 | 0.20 | 1.56 | 3.51 |
File I/O
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel | DigitalOcean – Premium AMD | Vultr – High Frequency Intel | Vultr – High Performance AMD | Vultr – High Performance Intel | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reads per Second | 1,920.02 | 1,385.23 | 4,766.18 | 1,129.47 | 4,111.21 |
| Writes per Second | 1,280.02 | 923.48 | 3,177.45 | 752.99 | 2,740.78 |
| Fsyncs per Second | 4,103.98 | 2,958.93 | 10,177.20 | 2,413.03 | 8,781.88 |
| Minimum (ms) | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Average (ms) | 0.14 | 0.20 | 0.05 | 0.23 | 0.06 |
| Maximum (ms) | 10.61 | 16.25 | 4.62 | 226.54 | 5.70 |
MySQL
Read Only
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel | DigitalOcean – Premium AMD | Vultr – High Frequency Intel | Vultr – High Performance AMD | Vultr – High Performance Intel | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Transactions per Second | 6,208.00 | 4,427.67 | 9,136.67 | 7,582.33 | 6,120.00 |
| Queries per Second | 99,328.00 | 70,842.67 | 146,186.67 | 121,317.33 | 97,920.00 |
| Minimum (ms) | 1.16 | 1.55 | 0.92 | 0.97 | 1.17 |
| Average (ms) | 1.64 | 2.27 | 1.12 | 1.41 | 1.65 |
| Maximum (ms) | 12.48 | 17.38 | 9.88 | 51.36 | 15.75 |
Write Only
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel | DigitalOcean – Premium AMD | Vultr – High Frequency Intel | Vultr – High Performance AMD | Vultr – High Performance Intel | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Transactions per Second | 3,955.67 | 2,876.33 | 9,937.67 | 1,454.00 | 7,054.67 |
| Queries per Second | 23,734.00 | 17,258.00 | 59,626.00 | 8,724.00 | 42,328.00 |
| Minimum (ms) | 0.92 | 1.23 | 0.60 | 1.10 | 0.69 |
| Average (ms) | 2.61 | 3.53 | 1.04 | 6.89 | 1.46 |
| Maximum (ms) | 34.81 | 29.90 | 9.93 | 662.01 | 14.55 |
Read Write
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel | DigitalOcean – Premium AMD | Vultr – High Frequency Intel | Vultr – High Performance AMD | Vultr – High Performance Intel | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Transactions per Second | 1,820.33 | 1,433.67 | 4,093.00 | 1,332.67 | 2,530.33 |
| Queries per Second | 36,406.67 | 28,673.33 | 81,860.00 | 26,653.33 | 50,606.67 |
| Minimum (ms) | 2.79 | 3.43 | 1.69 | 2.33 | 2.31 |
| Average (ms) | 5.51 | 6.98 | 2.52 | 7.95 | 4.07 |
| Maximum (ms) | 25.50 | 31.59 | 19.42 | 238.13 | 19.36 |
Redis
| DigitalOcean – Premium Intel | DigitalOcean – Premium AMD | Vultr – High Frequency Intel | Vultr – High Performance AMD | Vultr – High Performance Intel | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PING_INLINE | 78,627.45 | 54,991.15 | 65,807.29 | 90,235.25 | 49,271.71 |
| PING_BULK | 76,837.57 | 52,738.33 | 64,322.61 | 86,532.39 | 48,282.91 |
| SET | 80,359.37 | 50,759.23 | 65,378.56 | 90,589.42 | 49,769.65 |
| GET | 77,845.56 | 51,637.48 | 64,260.24 | 88,023.02 | 49,292.04 |
| INCR | 75,633.93 | 52,247.29 | 65,210.97 | 89,428.15 | 49,694.87 |
| LPUSH | 79,280.23 | 42,475.95 | 66,747.28 | 87,001.54 | 50,647.72 |
| RPUSH | 80,292.21 | 46,515.89 | 64,231.75 | 86,533.00 | 50,758.47 |
| LPOP | 80,044.33 | 48,163.67 | 64,858.35 | 81,528.54 | 49,855.62 |
| RPOP | 83,512.99 | 52,557.16 | 63,293.25 | 88,947.32 | 49,440.60 |
| SADD | 80,036.32 | 55,733.86 | 63,988.02 | 91,142.36 | 48,527.86 |
| HSET | 79,930.29 | 48,318.91 | 63,316.36 | 85,362.07 | 50,823.91 |
| SPOP | 72,643.42 | 54,190.98 | 61,664.19 | 89,199.11 | 50,331.20 |
| LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) | 36,095.98 | 23,699.77 | 45,323.01 | 31,826.97 | 32,951.20 |
| LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) | 13,834.85 | 10,926.44 | 19,020.63 | 14,186.30 | 13,875.14 |
| LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) | 9,638.71 | 6,588.53 | 13,162.55 | 10,405.82 | 10,193.95 |
| LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) | 7,746.12 | 5,575.25 | 10,636.11 | 8,167.65 | 8,386.98 |
| MSET (10 keys) | 46,047.16 | 25,572.89 | 54,247.25 | 56,555.80 | 44,236.59 |
Conclusion
Fairly consistent results with previous months with UpCloud leading the pack at
the $5 price point and Vultr doing the same at the $6 price. What’s interesting
is that the Vultr “High *” plans were a bit all over the place in terms of one
of them being a very clear leader of the pack.
As I always mention, it’s always a good idea to spin up multiple instances with
a provider and run your own benchmarks to make sure you’re getting your money’s
worth. Always factor in your own needs when picking a provider and don’t be
fooled by marketing jargon.
Also, if you’ve found this review helpful in your search for a new hosting
provider, please use one of my referral links below.
