VPS Showdown - May 2022 - DigitalOcean vs. Lightsail vs. Linode vs. UpCloud vs. Vultr

Josh Sherman
27 min read
VPS Showdown
HEADS-UP: A ton has changed since this post was originally published!
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The big news for this month would be DigitalOcean’s announcement of their “serverless functions” product being beta released. Said functionality is the equivalent of AWS Lambda, GCP Cloud Functions and Azure Function.

While not the most exciting news, as I don’t include any additional benchmarks, it did lead to me expanding the overview to include serverless functions.

My initial plan this month was to run things on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (and omitting AWS Lightsail since they tend to drag behind on their adoption). Sadly, when I went to run my benchmark script on it, it barked about a ton of issues, so I’ll need to work through those before moving to Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.

It’s worth noting though, that UpCloud didn’t actually have Ubuntu 22.04 LTS as a distro option when creating new servers, so seems they are also dragging their feet on offering it.

As always, this post features benchmarks that were generated from 3 server instances from each provider at the $5 and $6 price points. The results are averaged where applicable. Each instance is running Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and exists in or around the New York / Newark 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 8.0.28 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 DocumentDB, Memcached, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Redis 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 (Haswell, no TSX, IBRS)
Vultr - Instance #3 Intel Core Processor (Haswell, no TSX, IBRS)
  DigitalOcean Lightsail Linode UpCloud Vultr
CPU MHz 2,494.14 2,399.97 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 3,325.67 3,200.33 3,399.67 3,859.67 3,196.00

CPU

  DigitalOcean Lightsail Linode UpCloud Vultr
Events per Second 830.44 761.84 1,371.84 1,635.03 714.65
Minimum (ms) 0.95 1.19 0.65 0.59 1.25
Average (ms) 1.22 1.31 0.75 0.61 1.40
Maximum (ms) 17.10 2.04 5.61 2.67 6.66

Memory

Read

  DigitalOcean Lightsail Linode UpCloud Vultr
Ops per Second 3,673,705.03 522,746.89 4,290,192.37 5,435,608.57 3,556,545.08
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) 14.62 0.19 4.64 0.25 4.44

Write

  DigitalOcean Lightsail Linode UpCloud Vultr
Ops per Second 3,694,312.45 523,158.45 4,024,275.38 5,462,390.39 3,535,161.00
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) 6.92 0.23 5.91 0.69 2.96

File I/O

  DigitalOcean Lightsail Linode UpCloud Vultr
Reads per Second 903.53 990.86 1,888.37 2,619.42 1,866.22
Writes per Second 602.35 660.52 1,258.92 1,746.26 1,244.16
Fsyncs per Second 1,931.52 2,121.00 4,035.90 5,596.29 3,990.02
Minimum (ms) 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
Average (ms) 0.30 0.27 0.15 0.10 0.14
Maximum (ms) 43.29 31.15 27.06 17.17 6.31

MySQL

Read Only

  DigitalOcean Lightsail Linode UpCloud Vultr
Transactions per Second 3,993.00 4,536.67 5,119.33 7,560.33 4,143.00
Queries per Second 63,888.00 72,586.67 81,909.33 120,965.33 66,288.00
Minimum (ms) 1.45 1.77 1.45 0.98 1.77
Average (ms) 2.51 2.20 2.18 1.32 2.42
Maximum (ms) 21.72 47.48 19.98 11.35 21.36

Write Only

  DigitalOcean Lightsail Linode UpCloud Vultr
Transactions per Second 1,039.67 1,558.67 4,468.00 4,240.33 2,595.00
Queries per Second 6,238.00 9,352.00 26,808.00 25,442.00 15,570.00
Minimum (ms) 2.04 3.27 1.08 1.38 1.53
Average (ms) 9.78 6.46 2.82 2.36 3.89
Maximum (ms) 86.38 97.59 74.88 17.68 57.62

Read Write

  DigitalOcean Lightsail Linode UpCloud Vultr
Transactions per Second 583.33 1,074.00 1,739.00 2,334.33 1,478.67
Queries per Second 11,666.67 21,480.00 34,780.00 46,686.67 29,573.33
Minimum (ms) 5.39 5.58 3.12 2.65 3.94
Average (ms) 17.16 9.34 6.52 4.29 6.79
Maximum (ms) 118.35 93.32 147.70 19.64 58.90

Redis

  DigitalOcean Lightsail Linode UpCloud Vultr
PING_INLINE 38,654.56 45,726.89 57,104.53 63,723.13 35,314.12
PING_BULK 35,539.67 45,406.50 59,483.93 62,223.64 32,079.28
SET 35,150.81 45,620.46 62,482.71 65,440.57 35,737.97
GET 37,723.95 45,586.18 61,276.80 63,707.98 34,788.44
INCR 37,960.24 45,511.54 65,777.83 65,133.41 33,271.98
LPUSH 39,156.86 45,816.04 54,765.85 70,388.50 36,745.41
RPUSH 38,903.91 45,579.44 57,340.51 68,084.19 36,776.17
LPOP 40,438.35 45,739.46 48,254.95 68,646.95 37,138.81
RPOP 38,835.14 45,621.37 50,404.05 67,764.33 35,796.62
SADD 36,500.45 45,395.05 60,964.30 65,577.89 35,072.41
HSET 37,434.72 45,912.14 56,106.06 71,196.02 37,039.40
SPOP 34,257.67 45,690.49 62,740.51 64,035.82 34,599.37
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) 22,763.63 29,751.29 27,048.89 31,399.02 24,558.93
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) 9,686.14 12,770.04 8,833.90 11,558.15 9,758.00
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) 6,846.14 9,400.75 6,288.42 9,149.50 6,929.30
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) 5,702.49 7,557.34 5,252.30 7,499.88 5,518.05
MSET (10 keys) 29,369.95 37,901.73 27,990.43 64,205.89 29,267.97

$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 2,427.63 1,996.25 3,696.00 1,996.25 2,926.46
Cache Size (KB) 4,096.00 512.00 16,384.00 512.00 16,384.00
BogoMips 3,192.67 2,661.67 4,928.00 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 760.10 1,444.23 1,406.45 3,430.96 1,126.90
Minimum (ms) 1.00 0.62 0.70 0.28 0.85
Average (ms) 1.63 0.69 0.72 0.29 0.89
Maximum (ms) 17.39 2.85 3.59 28.24 5.89

Memory

Read

  DigitalOcean - Premium Intel DigitalOcean - Premium AMD Vultr - High Frequency Intel Vultr - High Performance AMD Vultr - High Performance Intel
Ops per Second 2,947,436.58 3,938,695.73 6,807,736.03 4,903,164.64 5,221,374.70
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) 20.79 7.52 1.30 4.18 1.77

Write

  DigitalOcean - Premium Intel DigitalOcean - Premium AMD Vultr - High Frequency Intel Vultr - High Performance AMD Vultr - High Performance Intel
Ops per Second 3,539,691.75 4,526,903.83 6,775,623.16 5,049,626.46 5,204,902.15
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) 11.32 0.30 2.01 2.51 1.29

File I/O

  DigitalOcean - Premium Intel DigitalOcean - Premium AMD Vultr - High Frequency Intel Vultr - High Performance AMD Vultr - High Performance Intel
Reads per Second 920.75 1,280.62 4,639.94 820.60 4,282.83
Writes per Second 613.83 853.75 3,093.30 547.07 2,855.17
Fsyncs per Second 1,967.25 2,736.25 9,903.11 1,752.94 9,140.90
Minimum (ms) 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
Average (ms) 0.36 0.21 0.06 0.33 0.06
Maximum (ms) 38.36 31.68 4.40 332.56 9.92

MySQL

Read Only

  DigitalOcean - Premium Intel DigitalOcean - Premium AMD Vultr - High Frequency Intel Vultr - High Performance AMD Vultr - High Performance Intel
Transactions per Second 3,938.00 4,457.67 8,969.00 7,614.00 6,262.67
Queries per Second 63,008.00 71,322.67 143,504.00 121,824.00 100,202.67
Minimum (ms) 1.46 1.38 0.93 0.99 1.21
Average (ms) 3.08 2.26 1.12 1.32 1.60
Maximum (ms) 45.02 33.89 10.06 97.56 20.80

Write Only

  DigitalOcean - Premium Intel DigitalOcean - Premium AMD Vultr - High Frequency Intel Vultr - High Performance AMD Vultr - High Performance Intel
Transactions per Second 1,440.33 2,472.00 9,631.67 788.00 7,131.67
Queries per Second 8,642.00 14,832.00 57,790.00 4,728.00 42,790.00
Minimum (ms) 2.29 1.23 0.59 1.11 0.69
Average (ms) 13.99 4.53 1.05 12.89 1.40
Maximum (ms) 88.17 72.04 8.54 540.52 25.06

Read Write

  DigitalOcean - Premium Intel DigitalOcean - Premium AMD Vultr - High Frequency Intel Vultr - High Performance AMD Vultr - High Performance Intel
Transactions per Second 1,159.00 1,252.67 3,910.67 550.00 2,910.00
Queries per Second 23,180.00 25,053.33 78,213.33 11,000.00 58,200.00
Minimum (ms) 6.17 3.22 1.70 2.70 2.17
Average (ms) 18.77 8.03 2.59 19.25 3.44
Maximum (ms) 81.93 72.04 13.26 730.90 23.68

Redis

  DigitalOcean - Premium Intel DigitalOcean - Premium AMD Vultr - High Frequency Intel Vultr - High Performance AMD Vultr - High Performance Intel
PING_INLINE 37,752.11 57,398.20 63,350.99 86,695.92 49,517.31
PING_BULK 47,354.11 61,524.28 62,074.81 85,939.26 48,774.99
SET 47,114.56 63,921.48 64,884.33 87,954.75 49,848.36
GET 44,428.96 67,546.71 62,460.26 85,928.74 49,064.22
INCR 44,901.22 70,497.16 62,676.88 86,360.50 50,301.50
LPUSH 36,603.41 60,828.76 65,361.10 85,412.42 50,748.86
RPUSH 37,607.87 60,899.17 64,295.53 87,371.26 51,225.90
LPOP 36,949.10 59,809.02 65,210.00 86,733.08 50,706.62
RPOP 36,402.21 59,557.56 63,201.95 85,939.78 50,822.59
SADD 46,487.25 60,495.78 63,605.22 87,558.58 50,447.81
HSET 50,988.35 53,912.51 65,536.49 89,968.99 51,236.82
SPOP 44,092.05 60,434.33 62,494.75 85,947.20 50,113.78
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) 25,390.22 27,292.20 43,756.91 31,722.58 33,466.65
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) 8,696.39 12,960.12 18,628.73 13,989.92 14,140.66
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) 5,466.24 7,636.90 12,762.15 10,108.89 10,311.42
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) 5,139.61 6,457.74 10,748.55 8,045.25 8,642.60
MSET (10 keys) 21,176.50 30,054.12 55,651.45 56,822.10 43,014.30

Conclusion

Fairly consistent with previous months, with AMD processors stealing the show (regardless of the provider offering them).

Since I’ll be putting some time into updating my benchmarks script to run properly on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, I’ll more than likely be delving into expanding the benchmarks even further as there’s been some stuff (like MongoDB performance) that I’ve been more and more interested in.

As always, if you found these benchmarks helpful, please use one of my referral links below when you sign up:

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