The VPS market is full of marketing claims — “premium,” “CPU-optimized,” “compute-optimized.” But what do you really get for your money?
We wanted to find out. So we benchmarked 8 VPS types across 4 providers — AWS, Vultr, DigitalOcean, and Raff Technologies — all with the same baseline configuration: 4GB RAM, 2 vCPU, AlmaLinux 9.6.
The results were surprising: price had almost zero correlation with performance. In fact, the cheapest VPS — Raff Technologies at $20/month — scored higher than AWS’s $74 c7a.large.
Introducing PPD: Performance Per Dollar
To make fair comparisons across providers, we created a simple metric: Performance Per Dollar (PPD).
What’s included?
- CPU (single-core and multi-core)
- Memory bandwidth (read/write)
- Disk performance (sequential + IOPS)
- Network throughput & latency
- Stability (real-world workloads)
How it’s scored:
- Each metric normalized on a 0–100 scale
- Weighted average:
- CPU: 25%
- Memory: 20%
- Disk: 30%
- Network: 15%
- Stability: 10%
Formula:
PPD = Overall Performance Score ÷ Monthly Price
Interpretation:
- Above 2.5 → Exceptional value
- 2.0–2.5 → Good value
- 1.5–2.0 → Fair value
- Below 1.5 → Poor value
📊 Summary Results
| Provider (Type) | Price | Score | PPD | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Raff Technologies – Standard | $20 | 60.5 | 3.03 | 🏆 Best Value |
| Vultr – Regular | $24 | 66.0 | 2.75 | Excellent |
| Vultr – High Frequency | $45 | 72.8 | 1.62 | Strong but pricey |
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD | $28 | 56.5 | 2.02 | Fair value |
| DigitalOcean – CPU Optimized | $42 | 56.3 | 1.34 | Overpriced |
| AWS – c7a.large | $74 | 50.9 | 0.69 | Overpriced |
| DigitalOcean – Regular | $24 | 48.9 | 2.04 | Weak |
| AWS – t2.medium | $33 | 17.4 | 0.52 | Poor value |
🔑 Key Findings
Price ≠ Performance
Raff Technologies ($20) outperformed AWS c7a.large ($74). Paying more doesn’t guarantee better results.
“Optimized” ≠ Optimized
DigitalOcean’s “CPU-Optimized” plan had the worst CPU score of all DO plans.
The Sweet Spot Exists
VPS in the $20–24 range delivered the best balance of performance and cost.
🏆 Recommendations
💰 Best Value
→ Raff Technologies – $20/mo
- 60.5/100 performance score
- 80GB NVMe included
- PPD of 3.03 (exceptional value)
- Works well for dev, staging, production, APIs, and databases
⚖️ Balanced Performance
→ Vultr – Regular ($24/mo)
- 66.0/100 score
- 100GB NVMe included
- Strong CPU, good for production and database workloads
- Only $4 more than Raff, covers most needs
- But Vultr’s pricing tends to signal “step up” toward higher-resource plans, something to consider if you’re scaling
🚀 Premium Performance (Hard to Justify)
→ Vultr – High Frequency ($45/mo)
- 72.8/100 score, excellent memory bandwidth
- Just ~12% faster than Raff, at 2.25× the price
- With Vultr Regular already strong and cheaper, the uplift is rarely worth it
😬 DigitalOcean (Disappointing Results)
- “CPU-Optimized” plan scored the lowest CPU performance (3.51/100) in all tests
- Premium AMD ($28) was decent but still worse value than Raff or Vultr
- Regular $24 plan lagged behind both Raff and Vultr — hard to recommend
📉 The Uncomfortable Truth About AWS
AWS instances consistently delivered the worst performance per dollar:
- t2.medium ($33) → Scored just 17.4/100, PPD 0.52
- c7a.large ($74) → Scored 50.9/100, PPD 0.69
Even “compute-optimized” instances underperformed due to EBS storage bottlenecks.
AWS only makes sense if you:
- Need AWS-specific services (RDS, Lambda, S3, etc.)
- Already invested in AWS ecosystem
- Have enterprise discounts
Otherwise, you’re paying 2–3× more for less performance.
🛠️ Methodology & Tools
- CPU/Memory → sysbench
- Disk → fio, dd
- Network → speedtest-cli, ping
- Stability → 1000 file ops, 100k row sort, 100MB compression
- Process → Each test run 5×, outliers removed, results normalized 0–100
💡 Final Thoughts
The VPS market has a big marketing vs reality gap. Labels like “Premium” or “Optimized” don’t guarantee performance.
Our testing shows you can save 50–70% on hosting costs while actually improving performance — simply by choosing smart.
Two rules for picking a VPS:
- Don’t trust marketing names.
- Price rarely predicts performance.
🚀 What’s Next?
We’re expanding the benchmark:
- Hostinger
- Netcup (aggressive pricing)
- Community requests → drop suggestions in the comments!
If you want to test your own VPS, grab the script and compare your results. You might be surprised by what you find.
👉 Follow for updates as we add more providers.
Top comments (1)
This is one of the most useful VPS comparisons I’ve seen in a while!
Most benchmarks only show raw CPU or disk numbers, but the PPD metric makes it way easier to understand the real value you’re getting.