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

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Welcome to another round of the VPS Showdown. Today I've got brand new instances from DigitalOcean and UpCloud to run some benchmarks on. Each instance was running Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 and all resided 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 Thu, 01 Oct 2026 05:11:18 GMT Thu, 01 Oct 2026 05:05:17 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 $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 3,992.49 6,590.84
Events per Second 708.66 4,733.64
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.65 0.19
Average Latency (ms) 1.41 0.21
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.44 2.28
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.61 0.24

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Operations per second 3,392,467.16 6,924,337.90
Mebibytes per second 3,312.96 6,762.05
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.02 0.39
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Operations per second 5,222,214.40 6,734,576.12
Mebibytes per second 5,099.82 6,576.73
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.39 3.06
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Reads per Second 1,898.43 2,742.06
Writes per Second 1,265.62 1,828.04
Fsyncs per Second 4,052.28 5,852.11
Read Mebibytes per Second 29.66 42.84
Written Mebibytes per Second 19.78 28.56
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.14 0.1
Maximum Latency (ms) 22.66 43.15
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.49 0.35

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 1,638.91 1,334.65
Average Latency (ms) 1,646.82 1,340.93
Maximum Latency (ms) 1,653.32 1,347.94
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1,648.20 1,352.03

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 7,225.00 14,724.00
Queries per second 72,250.00 147,240.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.16 0.44
Average Latency (ms) 1.38 0.68
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.03 2.7
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.82 0.83

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 4,858.00 4,255.00
Queries per second 48,580.00 42,550.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.06 0.85
Average Latency (ms) 2.06 2.35
Maximum Latency (ms) 18.55 65.45
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.97 3.89

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 2,569.00 2,815.00
Queries per second 25,690.00 28,150.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.53 1.68
Average Latency (ms) 3.89 3.55
Maximum Latency (ms) 31.93 63.07
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5.57 5.57

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 7,028.00 6,031.00
Queries per second 70,280.00 60,310.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.73 0.68
Average Latency (ms) 1.42 1.65
Maximum Latency (ms) 14.53 51.97
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.48 2.91

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 1,346,717.00 1,870,967.00
Queries per second 13,467,170.00 18,709,670.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 407.94 243.66
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 163,275.00 366,555.00
Queries per second 1,632,750.00 3,665,550.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.05 0.02
Average Latency (ms) 0.06 0.03
Maximum Latency (ms) 1 1.64
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.09 0.04

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 5,941.00 6,679.00
Queries per second 59,410.00 66,790.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.51 0.43
Average Latency (ms) 1.68 1.5
Maximum Latency (ms) 4 6.15
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.22 2.07

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 7,397.00 10,571.00
Queries per second 73,970.00 105,710.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.39 0.3
Average Latency (ms) 1.35 0.94
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.62 2.5
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.79 1.25

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 7,797.00 6,592.00
Queries per second 77,970.00 65,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.76 0.64
Average Latency (ms) 1.28 1.52
Maximum Latency (ms) 11.43 73.34
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.03 2.43

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 7,389.00 6,361.00
Queries per second 73,890.00 63,610.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.72 0.66
Average Latency (ms) 1.35 1.57
Maximum Latency (ms) 15.13 65.52
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.22 2.57

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 53,947.00 101,477.00
Queries per second 539,470.00 1,014,770.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.05 0.02
Average Latency (ms) 0.18 0.1
Maximum Latency (ms) 17.82 48.04
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.12 0.17

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 69,300.07 48,899.75
PING_MBULK per Second 69,637.88 48,520.13
SET per Second 69,156.30 48,473.10
GET per Second 70,077.09 48,567.27
INCR per Second 64,557.78 48,216.01
LPUSH per Second 66,889.63 48,947.62
RPUSH per Second 68,259.38 48,828.12
LPOP per Second 63,938.62 46,446.82
RPOP per Second 66,844.91 45,808.52
SADD per Second 67,430.88 45,934.77
HSET per Second 70,028.02 45,871.56
SPOP per Second 67,430.88 44,964.03
ZADD per Second 64,184.86 45,955.88
ZPOPMIN per Second 59,737.16 44,306.60
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 38,417.21 32,530.91
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 18,416.21 20,462.45
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 12,968.49 15,964.24
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 10,951.70 14,490.65
MSET (10 keys) per Second 59,630.29 48,638.13

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
PING_INLINE0.460.60
PING_MBULK0.450.60
SET0.460.62
GET0.450.61
INCR0.490.62
LPUSH0.480.61
RPUSH0.470.62
LPOP0.510.67
RPOP0.480.67
SADD0.470.65
HSET0.460.66
SPOP0.470.66
ZADD0.500.66
ZPOPMIN0.530.67
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.910.95
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.801.55
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)2.632.01
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)3.012.26
MSET (10 keys)0.680.71

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The DigitalOcean Premium AMD (2 GB) instance wins overall in the benchmark comparison. The decisive benchmarks are the Redis GET operations, achieving a rate of 65,832 requests per second (rps) with an average latency of 0.479 ms, and the MySQL bulk insert, with a transaction per second (tps) rate of 118,946.56 and a minimal latency. For those needing robust CPU performance and low latency for database operations, the DigitalOcean instance is the better choice.

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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