DigitalOcean Premium AMD (1 GB) vs. UpCloud Balanced (1 GB)
Same showdown, different day. Today I spun up fresh instances from DigitalOcean and UpCloud and did some benchmarking. Each instance was spun up with Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 and were created in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Without further ado, here's the results.
Overview
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Last Benchmarked
Thu, 01 Oct 2026 05:09:47 GMT
Thu, 01 Oct 2026 05:02:17 GMT
Linux Distro
Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64
Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version
7.0.0-31-generic
7.0.0-29-generic
MySQL Version
8.4.11-0ubuntu0.26.04.1
8.4.11-0ubuntu0.26.04.1
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)
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Value (CPU events per $/mo)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) takes 4 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
3,295.42
CPU Cache Size (KB)
512.00
512.00
BogoMips
3,992.49
6,590.84
Events per Second
1,098.91
4,771.17
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.72
0.19
Average Latency (ms)
0.91
0.21
Maximum Latency (ms)
4.09
4.26
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
1.12
0.23
Memory
Memory Read
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Operations per second
4,162,799.09
6,936,402.22
Mebibytes per second
4,065.23
6,773.83
Minimum Latency (ms)
0
0
Average Latency (ms)
0
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
0.5
0.35
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
0
0
Memory Write
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Operations per second
4,248,501.02
6,762,728.29
Mebibytes per second
4,148.93
6,604.23
Minimum Latency (ms)
0
0
Average Latency (ms)
0
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
0.58
5.65
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
0
0
File I/O
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Reads per Second
1,259.91
2,763.16
Writes per Second
839.91
1,842.11
Fsyncs per Second
2,696.32
5,897.24
Read Mebibytes per Second
19.69
43.17
Written Mebibytes per Second
13.12
28.78
Minimum Latency (ms)
0
0
Average Latency (ms)
0.21
0.09
Maximum Latency (ms)
48.77
44.23
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
0.67
0.3
Mutex
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms)
2,291.63
1,275.54
Average Latency (ms)
2,304.59
1,282.62
Maximum Latency (ms)
2,317.78
1,289.72
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
2,320.55
1,280.93
MySQL
MySQL Read-only
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second
4,879.00
0.00
Queries per second
48,790.00
0.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
1.37
0
Average Latency (ms)
2.05
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
42.95
0
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
2.76
0
MySQL Write-only
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second
2,925.00
0.00
Queries per second
29,250.00
0.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
1.54
0
Average Latency (ms)
3.41
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
22.27
0
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
5.18
0
MySQL Read/Write
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second
1,482.00
0.00
Queries per second
14,820.00
0.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
3.5
0
Average Latency (ms)
6.74
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
25.47
0
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
10.27
0
MySQL INSERT
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second
4,894.00
0.00
Queries per second
48,940.00
0.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.88
0
Average Latency (ms)
2.04
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
17.26
0
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
3.62
0
MySQL Bulk INSERT
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second
1,026,342.00
0.00
Queries per second
10,263,420.00
0.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0
0
Average Latency (ms)
0.01
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
488.41
0
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
0
0
MySQL SELECT
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second
126,782.00
0.00
Queries per second
1,267,820.00
0.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.06
0
Average Latency (ms)
0.08
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
1.76
0
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
0.11
0
MySQL SELECT (Random Points)
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second
3,979.00
0.00
Queries per second
39,790.00
0.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.87
0
Average Latency (ms)
2.51
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
6.34
0
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
3.62
0
MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second
5,301.00
0.00
Queries per second
53,010.00
0.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.6
0
Average Latency (ms)
1.88
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
13.82
0
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
2.66
0
MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second
3,963.00
0.00
Queries per second
39,630.00
0.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
1.02
0
Average Latency (ms)
2.52
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
40.61
0
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
4.57
0
MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second
4,192.00
0.00
Queries per second
41,920.00
0.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
1.07
0
Average Latency (ms)
2.38
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
19.27
0
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
4.18
0
MySQL DELETE
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second
37,116.00
0.00
Queries per second
371,160.00
0.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.06
0
Average Latency (ms)
0.27
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
22.61
0
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
1.7
0
Redis
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second
54,259.36
36,218.76
PING_MBULK per Second
53,106.74
45,454.54
SET per Second
54,495.91
48,449.61
GET per Second
56,980.06
48,685.49
INCR per Second
52,938.06
48,449.61
LPUSH per Second
49,825.61
50,175.61
RPUSH per Second
51,124.75
48,828.12
LPOP per Second
51,072.52
50,942.43
RPOP per Second
50,327.12
49,603.17
SADD per Second
52,083.34
47,438.33
HSET per Second
45,537.34
48,685.49
SPOP per Second
52,826.20
46,403.71
ZADD per Second
48,402.71
47,687.18
ZPOPMIN per Second
52,083.34
47,103.16
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second
28,710.88
36,114.12
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second
12,250.40
23,266.64
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second
7,739.94
15,227.65
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second
6,953.14
11,837.12
MSET (10 keys) per Second
41,101.52
44,964.03
Redis Average Latency (ms)
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
PING_INLINE
0.59
0.88
PING_MBULK
0.59
0.64
SET
0.59
0.63
GET
0.56
0.61
INCR
0.61
0.62
LPUSH
0.65
0.61
RPUSH
0.63
0.62
LPOP
0.65
0.61
RPOP
0.65
0.62
SADD
0.62
0.63
HSET
0.71
0.62
SPOP
0.60
0.64
ZADD
0.67
0.65
ZPOPMIN
0.61
0.63
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)
1.21
0.87
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)
2.68
1.38
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)
3.95
2.08
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)
4.40
2.62
MSET (10 keys)
0.97
0.76
Conclusion
From the friendly robots:
In the comparison between the DigitalOcean Premium AMD and the UpCloud Balanced instances, DigitalOcean's instance edges out with superior Redis performance metrics, particularly in commands like GET and LPUSH, where it achieves higher requests per second (rps) and lower average latency, showcasing better efficiency for CPU-heavy tasks. While UpCloud's instance provides slightly better file I/O and memory transfer speeds, the overall CPU and memory benchmarks favor the DigitalOcean instance, making it more suitable for applications requiring high CPU throughput and low latency, such as real-time data processing and high-frequency trading platforms.
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.
