VPS Showdown – March 2024 – DigitalOcean vs. Linode vs. Vultr

While spring isn’t officially here yet, it’s definitely starting to feel like winter is over. More of the same this month, as we finish off the first quarter of 2024.

Next month, I’m hoping to finally get some MongoDB benchmarks into the mix. By the end of the second quarter, Ubuntu 24.04 LTS will be released as well. It’s always fun to see which providers make it available the fastest.

One small observation this month, all of the Linode instances had the same first 3 parts to their IP addresses. This makes me think that all three instances may have resided on the same physical host. Fortunately, It didn’t seem like running benchmarks choked itself out (noisy neighbor problem) so my theory may not be correct.

As always, I’ve spun up 3 instances with each VPS provided, all running Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. Where it made sense, I averaged out the results.

Overview – DigitalOcean vs. Linode vs. Vultr

Linux DistroUbuntu 22.04 LTS
Kernel Version5.15.0
MySQL Version8.0.36
Redis Version6.0.16

DigitalOceanLinodeVultr
LocationNew York 1Newark, NJNew York (NJ)
Monthly Price$6/month$5/month$5/month
Hourly Price$0.009/hour$0.0075/hour$0.007/hour
RAM1 GB1 GB1 GB
CPU1 Core1 Core1 Core
Storage25 GB25 GB25 GB
Storage TypeSSDSSDSSD
Transfer1 TB1 TB1 TB
Transfer Overage$0.01/GB$0.01/GB$0.01/GB
Backups$1.2/month$2/month$1/month

CPU Info

Model Name
DigitalOcean – All InstancesDO-Regular
Linode – All InstancesAMD EPYC 7713 64-Core Processor
Vultr – All InstancesAMD EPYC-Rome Processor
DigitalOceanLinodeVultr
CPU MHz2,361.122,000.001,996.25
Cache Size (KB)4,096.00512.00512.00
BogoMipsn/a2,666.672,661.67

CPU

DigitalOceanLinodeVultr
Events per Second924.043,658.832,786.73
Minimum (ms)0.930.240.30
Average (ms)1.090.280.36
Maximum (ms)113.462.737.47

Memory

Read

DigitalOceanLinodeVultr
Ops per Second3,827,942.455,831,931.623,913,171.02
Minimum (ms)0.000.000.00
Average (ms)0.000.000.00
Maximum (ms)5.662.154.06

Write

DigitalOceanLinodeVultr
Ops per Second3,807,736.925,642,745.073,541,016.02
Minimum (ms)0.000.000.00
Average (ms)0.000.000.00
Maximum (ms)2.962.399.28

File I/O

DigitalOceanLinodeVultr
Reads per Second877.642,984.061,170.10
Writes per Second585.071,989.36780.07
Fsyncs per Second1,879.086,372.392,499.77
Minimum (ms)0.000.000.00
Average (ms)0.320.090.23
Maximum (ms)108.438.8947.56

MySQL

Read Only

DigitalOceanLinodeVultr
Transactions per Second4,206.678,121.673,777.33
Queries per Second67,306.67129,946.6760,437.33
Minimum (ms)1.180.931.33
Average (ms)2.471.232.65
Maximum (ms)84.8315.2552.02

Write Only

DigitalOceanLinodeVultr
Transactions per Second969.337,748.671,468.00
Queries per Second5,816.0046,492.008,808.00
Minimum (ms)3.510.681.54
Average (ms)13.061.298.50
Maximum (ms)419.3613.02112.00

Read Write

DigitalOceanLinodeVultr
Transactions per Second917.003,288.67703.33
Queries per Second18,340.0065,773.3314,066.67
Minimum (ms)5.321.823.83
Average (ms)12.133.0514.36
Maximum (ms)86.7814.56139.78

Redis

DigitalOceanLinodeVultr
PING_INLINE28,561.8055,847.6934,060.93
PING_BULK28,902.8651,983.2331,409.95
SET29,158.3357,841.2134,251.53
GET27,464.5255,262.8331,371.76
INCR27,597.9555,819.2633,459.05
LPUSH28,597.0059,834.6735,552.53
RPUSH28,375.5657,361.2336,647.47
LPOP29,128.8958,815.6935,015.51
RPOP28,511.2556,883.4733,206.44
SADD28,374.7755,638.0433,050.31
HSET30,318.0459,094.8136,487.43
SPOP28,819.9152,753.4033,581.67
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)17,952.7123,374.3621,579.72
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)7,804.5211,225.608,587.71
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)6,007.528,625.965,754.97
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)4,898.077,162.384,933.25
MSET (10 keys)30,343.5970,253.9128,691.15

Conclusion

Even though DigitalOcean is touting a faster CPU, Linode’s still looking quite strong as of late with their shared CPU offering. As always, if you’re shopping for a new VPS hosting provider, it’s always good to take some time to do your own independent benchmarking, and not just relying on what you read on the Internet.


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)
Josh Sherman - The Man, The Myth, The Avatar

About Josh

Husband. Father. Pug dad. Musician. Founder of Holiday API, Head of Engineering and Emoji Specialist at Mailshake, and author of the best damn Lorem Ipsum Library for PHP.


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