DigitalOcean Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) vs. UpCloud Balanced (2 GB)

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New day, new benchmarks. Today I've spun up brand new instance from DigitalOcean and UpCloud to run some benchmarks on. All instances were spun up with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and were created in the New York area (or close to it). Let's get into the numbers.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Last Benchmarked Tue, 12 May 2026 11:00:52 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 $21.00 €13.00
RAM (GB) 2 2
CPU Cores 2 1
Storage (TB) 60 50
Storage Type NVMe SSD
Transfer (TB) 3 2

CPU

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) 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 1,560.26 5,025.21
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.59 0.18
Average Latency (ms) 0.64 0.2
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.06 5.35
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.69 0.22

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Operations per second 4,876,345.27 5,932,400.60
Mebibytes per second 4,762.06 5,793.36
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.21 2.22
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Operations per second 4,927,449.86 6,706,599.41
Mebibytes per second 4,811.96 6,549.41
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.19 1.56
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Reads per Second 1,725.18 3,214.64
Writes per Second 1,150.12 2,143.03
Fsyncs per Second 3,684.17 6,864.71
Read Mebibytes per Second 26.96 50.23
Written Mebibytes per Second 17.97 33.48
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.15 0.08
Maximum Latency (ms) 6.97 20.14
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.55 0.31

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 861.23 1,349.13
Average Latency (ms) 896.40 1,353.60
Maximum Latency (ms) 924.38 1,361.99
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 926.33 1,352.03

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 5,447.00 19,090.00
Queries per second 54,470.00 190,900.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.4 0.31
Average Latency (ms) 1.83 0.52
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.52 5.34
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.26 0.64

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 3,769.00 3,974.00
Queries per second 37,690.00 39,740.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.41 0.87
Average Latency (ms) 2.65 2.51
Maximum Latency (ms) 21.31 38.67
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.82 5

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 2,009.00 2,830.00
Queries per second 20,090.00 28,300.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 3.1 1.29
Average Latency (ms) 4.98 3.53
Maximum Latency (ms) 15.84 56.72
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 6.79 6.32

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 5,188.00 4,647.00
Queries per second 51,880.00 46,470.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.06 0.61
Average Latency (ms) 1.92 2.15
Maximum Latency (ms) 12.78 28.58
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.02 4.41

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 1,375,842.00 2,249,592.00
Queries per second 13,758,420.00 22,495,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 448.37 207.34
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 119,183.00 645,161.00
Queries per second 1,191,830.00 6,451,610.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.05 0.01
Average Latency (ms) 0.08 0.02
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.81 2.26
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.11 0.02

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 7,445.00 8,546.00
Queries per second 74,450.00 85,460.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.43 0.13
Average Latency (ms) 1.34 1.17
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.47 172.57
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.89 1.58

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 6,562.00 11,562.00
Queries per second 65,620.00 115,620.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.49 0.22
Average Latency (ms) 1.52 0.86
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.46 4.07
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.03 1.27

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 4,890.00 4,711.00
Queries per second 48,900.00 47,110.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.01 0.73
Average Latency (ms) 2.04 2.12
Maximum Latency (ms) 17.91 30.41
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.13 3.96

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 5,023.00 5,393.00
Queries per second 50,230.00 53,930.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.12 0.48
Average Latency (ms) 1.99 1.85
Maximum Latency (ms) 28.99 39
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.97 3.43

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 41,819.00 101,195.00
Queries per second 418,190.00 1,011,950.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.05 0.01
Average Latency (ms) 0.24 0.1
Maximum Latency (ms) 14.59 39.3
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.61 0.17

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 50,581.69 130,208.34
PING_MBULK per Second 50,100.20 130,208.34
SET per Second 49,751.24 130,890.05
GET per Second 49,925.11 129,198.97
INCR per Second 51,733.06 128,534.70
LPUSH per Second 52,521.01 128,040.97
RPUSH per Second 50,864.70 126,582.27
LPOP per Second 46,663.56 124,688.28
RPOP per Second 47,664.44 127,226.46
SADD per Second 50,813.01 129,198.97
HSET per Second 51,308.36 133,511.34
SPOP per Second 49,677.10 139,275.77
ZADD per Second 49,358.34 130,039.02
ZPOPMIN per Second 48,851.98 129,701.68
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 40,355.12 55,524.71
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 23,148.15 28,785.26
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 16,949.15 18,942.98
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 15,008.25 17,038.68
MSET (10 keys) per Second 52,576.24 108,225.10

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
PING_INLINE0.520.25
PING_MBULK0.520.25
SET0.530.26
GET0.520.26
INCR0.500.26
LPUSH0.500.26
RPUSH0.510.27
LPOP0.560.27
RPOP0.550.27
SADD0.510.26
HSET0.510.26
SPOP0.520.24
ZADD0.530.26
ZPOPMIN0.540.26
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.660.66
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.151.27
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)1.581.95
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)1.872.16
MSET (10 keys)0.530.34

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

When comparing the DigitalOcean Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) instance and the UpCloud Balanced (2 GB) instance, the UpCloud instance demonstrates superior performance across a broad spectrum of benchmarks, particularly in CPU-intensive tasks, memory operations, and file I/O operations. The UpCloud instance outperforms the DigitalOcean instance in Redis benchmarks, including key operations and list ranges, suggesting higher throughput and lower latency. The UpCloud server's single core operates at a higher frequency, resulting in faster event processing and lower average latencies. However, the DigitalOcean instance exhibits better performance in CPU fairness and lower I/O latencies, which might be advantageous for applications with less CPU-intensive tasks. Considering these metrics, UpCloud's balanced instance is ideal for high-throughput applications, data processing, and databases, while the DigitalOcean Premium instance might be more suitable for scenarios requiring consistent file I/O performance and where CPU fairness is critical.

From the friendly human:

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