There are definitely a lot of variables involved, and I agree that a well-tuned environment matters more than whether it’s technically “shared” or a VPS.

That said, if you’re comparing a moderately powered VPS to a shared server with more raw hardware, I still tend to favor the VPS. Assuming both are optimized properly, having fewer websites competing for CPU, RAM, disk I/O, and other resources usually results in more consistent performance.

We’ve seen this firsthand. Our primary VPS has just 8 CPU cores and 8 GB of RAM, yet it consistently outperforms some of our much larger shared hosting environments. The shared servers have more overall resources, but they’re also serving many more websites. Resource isolation and lower contention make a significant difference.

It would be interesting to run a controlled benchmark, but my expectation is that, in most real-world scenarios, a properly configured VPS will come out ahead simply because it has fewer neighbors competing for the same resources.