DigitalOcean Premium AMD (2 GB) vs. UpCloud Balanced (1 GB)
My friend, I'm so glad you're here! Today I've got brand new instances from DigitalOcean and UpCloud and did some benchmarking. All instances were running Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 and were created in the New York area (or close to it). Time to see who showed up today.
Overview
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Last Benchmarked
Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:38:52 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
$14.00
€7.00
RAM (GB)
2
1
CPU Cores
1
1
Storage (TB)
50
25
Storage Type
NVMe
SSD
Transfer (TB)
2
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 (2 GB)
Value (CPU events per $/mo)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) takes 4 of 5 categories.
CPU
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 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
730.16
5,281.40
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.64
0.17
Average Latency (ms)
1.37
0.19
Maximum Latency (ms)
18.59
5.63
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
2.52
0.21
Memory
Memory Read
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Operations per second
3,123,620.54
7,916,721.84
Mebibytes per second
3,050.41
7,731.17
Minimum Latency (ms)
0
0
Average Latency (ms)
0
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
3.07
0.56
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
0
0
Memory Write
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Operations per second
5,224,478.37
7,831,276.08
Mebibytes per second
5,102.03
7,647.73
Minimum Latency (ms)
0
0
Average Latency (ms)
0
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
3.4
0.33
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
0
0
File I/O
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Reads per Second
2,012.74
3,918.58
Writes per Second
1,341.83
2,612.35
Fsyncs per Second
4,295.05
8,362.41
Read Mebibytes per Second
31.45
61.23
Written Mebibytes per Second
20.97
40.82
Minimum Latency (ms)
0
0
Average Latency (ms)
0.13
0.07
Maximum Latency (ms)
16.81
56.19
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
0.5
0.2
Mutex
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms)
1,660.48
1,149.76
Average Latency (ms)
1,679.64
1,155.73
Maximum Latency (ms)
1,687.90
1,166.28
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
1,678.14
1,170.65
MySQL
MySQL Read-only
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second
7,656.00
0.00
Queries per second
76,560.00
0.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
1.17
0
Average Latency (ms)
1.3
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
2.99
0
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
1.58
0
MySQL Write-only
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second
4,129.00
0.00
Queries per second
41,290.00
0.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
1.14
0
Average Latency (ms)
2.42
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
19.52
0
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
3.75
0
MySQL Read/Write
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second
2,409.00
0.00
Queries per second
24,090.00
0.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
2.42
0
Average Latency (ms)
4.15
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
75.42
0
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
6.55
0
MySQL INSERT
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second
6,034.00
0.00
Queries per second
60,340.00
0.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.73
0
Average Latency (ms)
1.66
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
18.71
0
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
3.02
0
MySQL Bulk INSERT
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second
1,346,717.00
0.00
Queries per second
13,467,170.00
0.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0
0
Average Latency (ms)
0.01
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
407.38
0
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
0
0
MySQL SELECT
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second
164,009.00
0.00
Queries per second
1,640,090.00
0.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.05
0
Average Latency (ms)
0.06
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
1.58
0
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
0.09
0
MySQL SELECT (Random Points)
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second
5,968.00
0.00
Queries per second
59,680.00
0.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.61
0
Average Latency (ms)
1.67
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
3.83
0
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
2.22
0
MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second
7,381.00
0.00
Queries per second
73,810.00
0.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.52
0
Average Latency (ms)
1.35
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
2.7
0
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
1.79
0
MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second
6,407.00
0.00
Queries per second
64,070.00
0.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.77
0
Average Latency (ms)
1.56
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
18.26
0
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
2.66
0
MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second
6,751.00
0.00
Queries per second
67,510.00
0.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.74
0
Average Latency (ms)
1.48
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
15.32
0
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
2.48
0
MySQL DELETE
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second
62,091.00
0.00
Queries per second
620,910.00
0.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.05
0
Average Latency (ms)
0.16
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
26.3
0
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
1.08
0
Redis
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second
71,225.07
45,871.56
PING_MBULK per Second
71,225.07
57,870.37
SET per Second
68,119.89
60,096.15
GET per Second
66,401.06
59,347.18
INCR per Second
70,077.09
58,997.05
LPUSH per Second
70,422.54
60,024.01
RPUSH per Second
68,965.52
59,206.63
LPOP per Second
68,259.38
59,952.04
RPOP per Second
66,445.18
59,206.63
SADD per Second
69,492.70
58,754.41
HSET per Second
66,445.18
58,275.06
SPOP per Second
69,930.07
59,559.26
ZADD per Second
71,428.57
61,312.08
ZPOPMIN per Second
71,174.38
61,050.06
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second
38,819.88
45,392.64
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second
18,768.77
25,859.84
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second
12,822.16
16,854.88
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second
10,741.14
17,455.05
MSET (10 keys) per Second
61,387.36
49,578.58
Redis Average Latency (ms)
DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
PING_INLINE
0.45
0.73
PING_MBULK
0.44
0.51
SET
0.47
0.51
GET
0.48
0.51
INCR
0.45
0.52
LPUSH
0.46
0.52
RPUSH
0.46
0.52
LPOP
0.47
0.52
RPOP
0.49
0.53
SADD
0.46
0.52
HSET
0.49
0.53
SPOP
0.45
0.50
ZADD
0.45
0.51
ZPOPMIN
0.44
0.50
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)
0.91
0.72
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)
1.81
1.24
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)
2.72
1.89
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)
3.13
1.79
MSET (10 keys)
0.65
0.71
Conclusion
From the friendly robots:
The DigitalOcean Premium AMD (2 GB) instance outperforms the UpCloud Balanced (1 GB) instance overall, particularly in CPU and memory benchmarks. The DigitalOcean instance achieves significantly higher request rates per second in Redis operations such as SET and GET, demonstrating superior CPU performance with rates above 70,000 rps compared to UpCloud's around 60,000 rps. Additionally, the DigitalOcean instance shows better memory operation rates and lower latencies in memory benchmarks, suggesting it handles memory-intensive tasks more efficiently. This makes the DigitalOcean instance a better choice for CPU-heavy and memory-intensive applications, whereas the UpCloud instance is more budget-friendly but falls short in raw performance metrics.
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.
