Josh Sherman
HEADS-UP:
A ton has changed since this post was originally published!
Why not check out the latest comparison?
Why not check out the latest comparison?
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:
- 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!
