AWS vs DigitalOcean: Benchmarking Guide for Developers (With $200 DO Credit)

If you’re debating between AWS and DigitalOcean for your next project, you’re not alone. Whether you’re deploying a simple web app, running a database, or spinning up containers, performance and price vary wildly between providers — even at similar instance sizes.

With DigitalOcean offering $200 in credits, now is the perfect time to run some hands-on tests to see how it stacks up against AWS for your specific use case.

Below is a breakdown of simple, practical benchmarking tests you can run to compare both platforms. These don’t require deep sysadmin skills and can be executed in minutes.


🔍 What to Test (and Why)

Test Type What It Measures Tools/Commands
CPU Performance Raw processing speed (useful for apps, builds) sysbench cpu --cpu-max-prime=20000 run
Disk I/O How fast storage reads/writes (key for DBs) dd if=/dev/zero of=testfile bs=1G count=1 oflag=dsync
Network Speed Upload/download speed to global targets speedtest-cli or iperf3
Boot Time How fast servers are provisioned and usable Timestamp date around setup script
Cost/Performance Value per dollar spent Manual calculation (see below)

🛠 Recommended Tools

These tools are open-source and easy to install on both AWS and DO servers:

bash
# Install sysbench
sudo apt-get install sysbench -y

# Install speedtest
sudo apt install speedtest-cli -y

# Install fio for advanced disk testing
sudo apt-get install fio -y

For full-suite testing, check out:

Click Here For $200 In DigitalOcean Credit & Start Testing Now


💡 Sample Benchmarking Workflow

  1. Spin up a server on DigitalOcean (e.g., Premium Intel 1 vCPU, 1GB RAM)

  2. Run:

    bash
    sysbench cpu --cpu-max-prime=20000 run
    speedtest-cli
    dd if=/dev/zero of=testfile bs=1G count=1 oflag=dsync
  3. Spin up an equivalent AWS EC2 instance (e.g., t3.micro or t4g.small)

  4. Run the same commands

  5. Record the results in a simple table:

    • Time to complete CPU task

    • Disk write speed

    • Upload/download Mbps

  6. Compare results based on hourly/monthly price


📊 Optional: Scorecard Template

Metric DigitalOcean Result AWS Result Winner
CPU (sec) 12.3 13.8 DO
Disk Write (MB/s) 720 480 DO
Network (Mbps) 880/740 620/600 DO
Boot Time (sec) 29 54 DO
Price ($/mo) $6 $8.56 DO

🔚 Final Tip

💬 Remember: The best platform isn’t just the fastest — it’s the one that performs well for your workload, scales affordably, and is simple to manage. This hands-on approach removes the guesswork.

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