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

vs.

Fresh benchmarks coming at ya. Today I spun up fresh instances from DigitalOcean and UpCloud and ran my world famous suite of benchmarking scripts. 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 (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Last Benchmarked Sat, 01 Aug 2026 05:11:17 GMT Sat, 01 Aug 2026 05:05:17 GMT
Linux Distro Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version 7.0.0-27-generic 7.0.0-27-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 €13.00
RAM (GB) 2 2
CPU Cores 1 1
Storage (TB) 50 50
Storage Type NVMe SSD
Transfer (TB) 2 2

Head-to-head

Category winners from the latest benchmarks.

CategoryWinner
CPU (events/sec)UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Memory (read MiB/s)UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Disk I/O (MiB/s)UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
MySQL (read/write tps)UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Redis (GET/sec)DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
Value (CPU events per $/mo)UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) takes 5 of 6 categories.

CPU

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 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 3,295.42
CPU Cache Size (KB) 512.00 512.00
BogoMips 3,992.50 6,590.84
Events per Second 726.05 4,736.09
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.64 0.19
Average Latency (ms) 1.37 0.21
Maximum Latency (ms) 12.5 2.23
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.57 0.24

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Operations per second 3,124,321.03 7,122,400.62
Mebibytes per second 3,051.09 6,955.47
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.2 0.37
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Operations per second 5,198,576.87 7,139,007.40
Mebibytes per second 5,076.74 6,971.69
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.33 0.29
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Reads per Second 1,786.48 3,511.30
Writes per Second 1,190.99 2,340.87
Fsyncs per Second 3,820.35 7,490.87
Read Mebibytes per Second 27.91 54.86
Written Mebibytes per Second 18.61 36.58
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.15 0.07
Maximum Latency (ms) 15.23 29.46
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.54 0.26

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 1,705.40 1,305.60
Average Latency (ms) 1,717.24 1,313.28
Maximum Latency (ms) 1,725.62 1,319.54
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1,739.68 1,327.91

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 7,218.00 15,488.00
Queries per second 72,180.00 154,880.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.2 0.44
Average Latency (ms) 1.38 0.64
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.84 2.13
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.67 0.77

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 4,665.00 5,617.00
Queries per second 46,650.00 56,170.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.12 0.87
Average Latency (ms) 2.14 1.78
Maximum Latency (ms) 24.52 47.05
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.43 2.81

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 2,351.00 3,612.00
Queries per second 23,510.00 36,120.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.54 1.68
Average Latency (ms) 4.25 2.76
Maximum Latency (ms) 29.54 29.34
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 6.21 3.96

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 7,702.00 8,793.00
Queries per second 77,020.00 87,930.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.73 0.53
Average Latency (ms) 1.3 1.13
Maximum Latency (ms) 39.5 33.56
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.22 1.79

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 1,317,592.00 2,016,592.00
Queries per second 13,175,920.00 20,165,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 403.62 214.98
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 161,910.00 421,834.00
Queries per second 1,619,100.00 4,218,340.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.05 0.02
Average Latency (ms) 0.06 0.02
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.19 1.13
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.09 0.03

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 5,673.00 8,876.00
Queries per second 56,730.00 88,760.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.55 0.3
Average Latency (ms) 1.76 1.13
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.81 4.11
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.48 1.55

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 7,133.00 14,529.00
Queries per second 71,330.00 145,290.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.45 0.2
Average Latency (ms) 1.4 0.69
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.08 2.02
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.89 0.99

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 7,358.00 7,318.00
Queries per second 73,580.00 73,180.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.76 0.57
Average Latency (ms) 1.36 1.36
Maximum Latency (ms) 32.59 38.29
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.22 2.14

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 7,941.00 8,495.00
Queries per second 79,410.00 84,950.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.73 0.57
Average Latency (ms) 1.26 1.18
Maximum Latency (ms) 24.84 20.17
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2 1.86

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 67,880.00 150,571.00
Queries per second 678,800.00 1,505,710.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.05 0.02
Average Latency (ms) 0.15 0.07
Maximum Latency (ms) 18.82 73.25
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.94 0.08

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 68,306.01 51,626.23
PING_MBULK per Second 67,294.75 51,203.28
SET per Second 66,979.23 51,786.64
GET per Second 68,352.70 52,356.02
INCR per Second 66,225.16 52,882.07
LPUSH per Second 67,024.13 53,390.28
RPUSH per Second 68,728.52 50,479.56
LPOP per Second 67,340.07 54,318.30
RPOP per Second 67,521.95 52,603.89
SADD per Second 69,589.42 51,679.59
HSET per Second 67,430.88 49,091.80
SPOP per Second 69,252.08 47,169.81
ZADD per Second 69,252.08 50,505.05
ZPOPMIN per Second 68,212.83 50,890.59
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 36,023.05 38,080.73
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 18,308.31 24,125.45
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 12,436.26 18,611.58
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 10,716.96 16,837.85
MSET (10 keys) per Second 55,679.29 49,578.58

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
PING_INLINE0.460.57
PING_MBULK0.460.57
SET0.480.59
GET0.460.57
INCR0.480.57
LPUSH0.470.57
RPUSH0.460.60
LPOP0.480.57
RPOP0.470.59
SADD0.450.58
HSET0.470.62
SPOP0.450.63
ZADD0.460.61
ZPOPMIN0.460.58
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.960.83
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.831.35
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)2.781.72
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)3.091.90
MSET (10 keys)0.730.73

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The DigitalOcean Premium AMD instance excels overall in benchmarking, particularly in CPU operations where it achieves a higher events per second (726.05 vs 4736.09) and lower average CPU latency (1.37ms vs 0.21ms). However, the UpCloud Balanced instance demonstrates superior performance in MySQL bulk insert transactions, registering a significantly higher TPS (198300.13 vs 131165.7). For users prioritizing high CPU performance and lower latencies, the DigitalOcean instance is superior, while those needing top-tier MySQL performance should opt for the UpCloud Balanced instance.

From the friendly human:

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Providers & pricing

DigitalOcean overview UpCloud overviewDigitalOcean Premium AMD (2 GB) pricing UpCloud Balanced (2 GB) pricing

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