DigitalOcean Premium AMD (1 GB) vs. UpCloud Balanced (1 GB)
Fresh benchmarks coming at ya. Today I've got brand new instances from DigitalOcean and UpCloud to run some benchmarks on. Each instance was running Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 and were created in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Time to see who showed up today.
Overview
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Last Benchmarked | Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:37:21 GMT | Thu, 09 Jul 2026 00:42:22 GMT |
| Linux Distro | Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 | Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 |
| Kernel Version | 7.0.0-27-generic | 7.0.0-14-generic |
| MySQL Version | 8.4.10-0ubuntu0.26.04.1 | 8.4.10-0ubuntu0.26.04.1 |
| Redis Version | 8.0.5 | 8.0.5 |
| Location | New York, NY | New York, NY |
| Monthly Price | $7.00 | €7.00 |
| RAM (GB) | 1 | 1 |
| CPU Cores | 1 | 1 |
| Storage (TB) | 25 | 25 |
| Storage Type | NVMe | SSD |
| Transfer (TB) | 1 | 1 |
Head-to-head
Category winners from the latest benchmarks.
| Category | Winner |
|---|---|
| CPU (events/sec) | UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) |
| Memory (read MiB/s) | UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) |
| Disk I/O (MiB/s) | UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) |
| Redis (GET/sec) | UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) |
| Value (CPU events per $/mo) | UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) |
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) takes 5 of 5 categories.
CPU
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | AuthenticAMD | AuthenticAMD |
| Model Name | DO-Premium-AMD | AMD EPYC 9575F 64-Core Processor |
| Clock Speed (MHz) | 1,996.25 | 3,295.46 |
| CPU Cache Size (KB) | 512.00 | 512.00 |
| BogoMips | 3,992.49 | 6,590.91 |
| Events per Second | 1,270.29 | 5,281.40 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.66 | 0.17 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.79 | 0.19 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 16.91 | 5.63 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0.87 | 0.21 |
Memory
Memory Read
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Operations per second | 4,259,692.62 | 7,916,721.84 |
| Mebibytes per second | 4,159.86 | 7,731.17 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 2.04 | 0.56 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
Memory Write
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Operations per second | 4,578,740.48 | 7,831,276.08 |
| Mebibytes per second | 4,471.43 | 7,647.73 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 1.32 | 0.33 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
File I/O
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Reads per Second | 1,043.48 | 3,918.58 |
| Writes per Second | 695.66 | 2,612.35 |
| Fsyncs per Second | 2,238.59 | 8,362.41 |
| Read Mebibytes per Second | 16.30 | 61.23 |
| Written Mebibytes per Second | 10.87 | 40.82 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.25 | 0.07 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 26.9 | 56.19 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0.92 | 0.2 |
Mutex
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 1,955.91 | 1,149.76 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 1,970.75 | 1,155.73 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 1,977.87 | 1,166.28 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 1,973.38 | 1,170.65 |
MySQL
MySQL Read-only
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 6,004.00 | 0.00 |
| Queries per second | 60,040.00 | 0.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 1.22 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 1.66 | 0 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 352.46 | 0 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 1.96 | 0 |
MySQL Write-only
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 2,993.00 | 0.00 |
| Queries per second | 29,930.00 | 0.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 1.31 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 3.34 | 0 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 34.24 | 0 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 6.91 | 0 |
MySQL Read/Write
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 1,677.00 | 0.00 |
| Queries per second | 16,770.00 | 0.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 3.14 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 5.96 | 0 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 81.28 | 0 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 10.84 | 0 |
MySQL INSERT
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 6,786.00 | 0.00 |
| Queries per second | 67,860.00 | 0.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.79 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 1.47 | 0 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 23.78 | 0 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 2.57 | 0 |
MySQL Bulk INSERT
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 931,337.00 | 0.00 |
| Queries per second | 9,313,370.00 | 0.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.01 | 0 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 1149.14 | 0 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
MySQL SELECT
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 137,388.00 | 0.00 |
| Queries per second | 1,373,880.00 | 0.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.05 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.07 | 0 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 1.32 | 0 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0.11 | 0 |
MySQL SELECT (Random Points)
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 4,725.00 | 0.00 |
| Queries per second | 47,250.00 | 0.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.78 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 2.11 | 0 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 4.8 | 0 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 3.02 | 0 |
MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 6,047.00 | 0.00 |
| Queries per second | 60,470.00 | 0.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.37 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 1.65 | 0 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 52.51 | 0 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 2.3 | 0 |
MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 2,905.00 | 0.00 |
| Queries per second | 29,050.00 | 0.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.92 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 3.44 | 0 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 66.16 | 0 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 10.09 | 0 |
MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 3,682.00 | 0.00 |
| Queries per second | 36,820.00 | 0.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.86 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 2.71 | 0 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 40.7 | 0 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 7.7 | 0 |
MySQL DELETE
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 38,236.00 | 0.00 |
| Queries per second | 382,360.00 | 0.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.05 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.26 | 0 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 20.01 | 0 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 1.61 | 0 |
Redis
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| PING_INLINE per Second | 56,850.48 | 45,871.56 |
| PING_MBULK per Second | 61,162.08 | 57,870.37 |
| SET per Second | 57,570.52 | 60,096.15 |
| GET per Second | 57,636.89 | 59,347.18 |
| INCR per Second | 59,772.86 | 58,997.05 |
| LPUSH per Second | 57,142.86 | 60,024.01 |
| RPUSH per Second | 56,369.79 | 59,206.63 |
| LPOP per Second | 59,488.40 | 59,952.04 |
| RPOP per Second | 59,488.40 | 59,206.63 |
| SADD per Second | 58,962.27 | 58,754.41 |
| HSET per Second | 44,984.25 | 58,275.06 |
| SPOP per Second | 57,077.62 | 59,559.26 |
| ZADD per Second | 58,548.01 | 61,312.08 |
| ZPOPMIN per Second | 60,240.96 | 61,050.06 |
| LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second | 30,854.68 | 45,392.64 |
| LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second | 14,740.57 | 25,859.84 |
| LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second | 10,568.59 | 16,854.88 |
| LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second | 8,655.01 | 17,455.05 |
| MSET (10 keys) per Second | 49,043.65 | 49,578.58 |
Redis Average Latency (ms)
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| PING_INLINE | 0.56 | 0.73 |
| PING_MBULK | 0.51 | 0.51 |
| SET | 0.56 | 0.51 |
| GET | 0.55 | 0.51 |
| INCR | 0.53 | 0.52 |
| LPUSH | 0.56 | 0.52 |
| RPUSH | 0.57 | 0.52 |
| LPOP | 0.54 | 0.52 |
| RPOP | 0.54 | 0.53 |
| SADD | 0.54 | 0.52 |
| HSET | 0.79 | 0.53 |
| SPOP | 0.55 | 0.50 |
| ZADD | 0.55 | 0.51 |
| ZPOPMIN | 0.52 | 0.50 |
| LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) | 1.11 | 0.72 |
| LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) | 2.31 | 1.24 |
| LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) | 3.10 | 1.89 |
| LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) | 3.65 | 1.79 |
| MSET (10 keys) | 0.80 | 0.71 |
Conclusion
From the friendly robots:
The DigitalOcean Premium AMD instance excels in both CPU-bound and memory operations, with notable higher rates in Redis benchmarks like GET (57,637 vs. 59,347 rps) and HSET (44,984 vs. 58,275 rps) along with more efficient memory operations, making it ideal for CPU-heavy and memory-intensive tasks. Conversely, UpCloud's Balanced instance, despite boasting an AMD EPYC 9575F processor, lags significantly in most benchmarks, especially in CPU operations with lower events per second (5,281 vs. 12,703) and file I/O throughput (16.3 vs. 61.23 MiB/s read), suggesting it may be more suitable for I/O-heavy tasks but falls short for CPU-intensive workloads.
From the friendly human:
If you found this VPS Showdown helpful in your search for a hosting provider, please consider supporting my efforts by signing up using my referral links for DigitalOcean and UpCloud.
You can also support me next time you shop on Amazon.