DigitalOcean Premium AMD (1 GB) vs. UpCloud Balanced (2 GB)

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Fresh benchmarks coming at ya. Today I've spun up brand new instance from DigitalOcean and UpCloud and ran some benchmarks. Each instance was spun up with Ubuntu 24.04 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 (2 GB)
Last Benchmarked Sun, 10 May 2026 21:00:52 GMT Wed, 13 May 2026 07:00:52 GMT
Linux Distro Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version 6.8.0-71-generic 6.8.0-111-generic
MySQL Version 8.0.45-0ubuntu0.24.04.1 8.0.45-0ubuntu0.24.04.1
Redis Version 7.0.15 7.0.15
Location New York, NY New York, NY
Monthly Price $7.00 €13.00
RAM (GB) 1 2
CPU Cores 1 1
Storage (TB) 25 50
Storage Type NVMe SSD
Transfer (TB) 1 2

CPU

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Vendor AuthenticAMD AuthenticAMD
Model Name DO-Premium-AMD AMD EPYC 9575F 64-Core Processor
Clock Speed (MHz) 1,996.25 3,295.48
CPU Cache Size (KB) 512.00 512.00
BogoMips 3,992.49 6,590.95
Events per Second 737.58 5,025.21
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.6 0.18
Average Latency (ms) 1.35 0.2
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.17 5.35
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.71 0.22

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Operations per second 4,241,036.38 5,932,400.60
Mebibytes per second 4,141.64 5,793.36
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.23 2.22
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Operations per second 4,880,937.38 6,706,599.41
Mebibytes per second 4,766.54 6,549.41
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.84 1.56
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Reads per Second 1,551.42 3,214.64
Writes per Second 1,034.28 2,143.03
Fsyncs per Second 3,313.60 6,864.71
Read Mebibytes per Second 24.24 50.23
Written Mebibytes per Second 16.16 33.48
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.17 0.08
Maximum Latency (ms) 12.81 20.14
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.58 0.31

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 1,833.32 1,349.13
Average Latency (ms) 1,845.81 1,353.60
Maximum Latency (ms) 1,856.79 1,361.99
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1,869.60 1,352.03

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 5,758.00 19,090.00
Queries per second 57,580.00 190,900.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.43 0.31
Average Latency (ms) 1.73 0.52
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.42 5.34
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.18 0.64

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 3,378.00 3,974.00
Queries per second 33,780.00 39,740.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.61 0.87
Average Latency (ms) 2.96 2.51
Maximum Latency (ms) 13.66 38.67
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.41 5

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 1,651.00 2,830.00
Queries per second 16,510.00 28,300.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 3.4 1.29
Average Latency (ms) 6.05 3.53
Maximum Latency (ms) 26.79 56.72
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 8.9 6.32

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 4,234.00 4,647.00
Queries per second 42,340.00 46,470.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.98 0.61
Average Latency (ms) 2.36 2.15
Maximum Latency (ms) 15.94 28.58
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.33 4.41

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 1,142,842.00 2,249,592.00
Queries per second 11,428,420.00 22,495,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 473.39 207.34
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 128,987.00 645,161.00
Queries per second 1,289,870.00 6,451,610.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.06 0.01
Average Latency (ms) 0.08 0.02
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.88 2.26
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.11 0.02

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 6,220.00 8,546.00
Queries per second 62,200.00 85,460.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.57 0.13
Average Latency (ms) 1.61 1.17
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.7 172.57
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.3 1.58

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 6,514.00 11,562.00
Queries per second 65,140.00 115,620.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.59 0.22
Average Latency (ms) 1.53 0.86
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.42 4.07
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.18 1.27

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 5,085.00 4,711.00
Queries per second 50,850.00 47,110.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.95 0.73
Average Latency (ms) 1.97 2.12
Maximum Latency (ms) 16.24 30.41
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.19 3.96

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 5,114.00 5,393.00
Queries per second 51,140.00 53,930.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.12 0.48
Average Latency (ms) 1.95 1.85
Maximum Latency (ms) 15.5 39
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.13 3.43

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 38,488.00 101,195.00
Queries per second 384,880.00 1,011,950.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.06 0.01
Average Latency (ms) 0.26 0.1
Maximum Latency (ms) 15.02 39.3
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.64 0.17

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 32,372.94 130,208.34
PING_MBULK per Second 35,087.72 130,208.34
SET per Second 36,363.64 130,890.05
GET per Second 36,088.05 129,198.97
INCR per Second 36,778.23 128,534.70
LPUSH per Second 36,101.08 128,040.97
RPUSH per Second 36,166.36 126,582.27
LPOP per Second 36,549.71 124,688.28
RPOP per Second 37,174.72 127,226.46
SADD per Second 37,105.75 129,198.97
HSET per Second 33,909.80 133,511.34
SPOP per Second 35,842.29 139,275.77
ZADD per Second 34,734.29 130,039.02
ZPOPMIN per Second 36,324.01 129,701.68
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 23,923.45 55,524.71
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 13,774.10 28,785.26
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 8,998.47 18,942.98
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 7,534.66 17,038.68
MSET (10 keys) per Second 33,322.23 108,225.10

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
PING_INLINE1.040.25
PING_MBULK0.960.25
SET0.940.26
GET0.940.26
INCR0.930.26
LPUSH0.950.26
RPUSH0.940.27
LPOP0.940.27
RPOP0.920.27
SADD0.920.26
HSET1.000.26
SPOP0.940.24
ZADD0.980.26
ZPOPMIN0.930.26
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)1.450.66
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)2.611.27
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)3.941.95
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)4.632.16
MSET (10 keys)1.050.34

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

Both VPS instances show excellent performance for their respective configurations, but the DigitalOcean Premium AMD (1 GB) instance excels in memory operations, redis commands, and cpu benchmarks with strong latency and throughput results, making it ideal for memory-intensive applications and applications requiring high throughput for Redis and CPU-bound workloads. The UpCloud Balanced (2 GB) instance, however, outperforms in terms of raw computational power with much higher events per second and significantly better performance in MySQL benchmarks, rendering it the better choice for applications that demand high CPU performance, such as complex computations and large database transactions. Both are suitable for different contexts: DigitalOcean for memory and Redis-heavy applications, and UpCloud for CPU-intensive and database-driven workloads.

From the friendly human:

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