VPS Showdown VPS Showdown

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

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Welcome to another round of the VPS Showdown. Today I spun up fresh instances from DigitalOcean and UpCloud to run some benchmarks on. All instances were running Ubuntu 26.04 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 (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Last Benchmarked Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:38:52 GMT Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:32:51 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 €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 3,295.48
CPU Cache Size (KB) 512.00 512.00
BogoMips 3,992.49 6,590.95
Events per Second 730.16 4,956.10
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.64 0.18
Average Latency (ms) 1.37 0.2
Maximum Latency (ms) 18.59 2.23
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.52 0.21

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Operations per second 3,123,620.54 7,348,809.99
Mebibytes per second 3,050.41 7,176.57
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.07 0.4
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Operations per second 5,224,478.37 7,078,785.07
Mebibytes per second 5,102.03 6,912.88
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.4 1.2
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Reads per Second 2,012.74 3,766.66
Writes per Second 1,341.83 2,511.11
Fsyncs per Second 4,295.05 8,036.14
Read Mebibytes per Second 31.45 58.85
Written Mebibytes per Second 20.97 39.24
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.13 0.07
Maximum Latency (ms) 16.81 19.19
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.5 0.24

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 1,660.48 1,248.77
Average Latency (ms) 1,679.64 1,256.62
Maximum Latency (ms) 1,687.90 1,260.30
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1,678.14 1,258.08

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 7,656.00 16,759.00
Queries per second 76,560.00 167,590.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.17 0.41
Average Latency (ms) 1.3 0.6
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.99 2.26
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.58 0.75

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 4,129.00 6,115.00
Queries per second 41,290.00 61,150.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.14 0.73
Average Latency (ms) 2.42 1.63
Maximum Latency (ms) 19.52 30.18
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.75 2.76

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 2,409.00 4,692.00
Queries per second 24,090.00 46,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.42 1.24
Average Latency (ms) 4.15 2.13
Maximum Latency (ms) 75.42 23.43
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 6.55 2.86

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 6,034.00 8,886.00
Queries per second 60,340.00 88,860.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.73 0.5
Average Latency (ms) 1.66 1.12
Maximum Latency (ms) 18.71 26.84
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.02 1.93

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 1,346,717.00 2,278,717.00
Queries per second 13,467,170.00 22,787,170.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 407.38 236.89
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 164,009.00 425,431.00
Queries per second 1,640,090.00 4,254,310.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.05 0.02
Average Latency (ms) 0.06 0.02
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.58 1.3
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.09 0.03

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 5,968.00 9,684.00
Queries per second 59,680.00 96,840.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.61 0.29
Average Latency (ms) 1.67 1.03
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.83 5.24
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.22 1.37

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 7,381.00 15,489.00
Queries per second 73,810.00 154,890.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.52 0.15
Average Latency (ms) 1.35 0.64
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.7 2.79
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.79 0.99

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 6,407.00 10,759.00
Queries per second 64,070.00 107,590.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.77 0.46
Average Latency (ms) 1.56 0.93
Maximum Latency (ms) 18.26 34.7
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.66 1.39

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 6,751.00 11,023.00
Queries per second 67,510.00 110,230.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.74 0.45
Average Latency (ms) 1.48 0.91
Maximum Latency (ms) 15.32 33.4
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.48 1.32

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 62,091.00 212,798.00
Queries per second 620,910.00 2,127,980.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.05 0.02
Average Latency (ms) 0.16 0.05
Maximum Latency (ms) 26.3 19.8
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.08 0.05

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 71,225.07 55,126.79
PING_MBULK per Second 71,225.07 54,794.52
SET per Second 68,119.89 55,710.31
GET per Second 66,401.06 55,340.34
INCR per Second 70,077.09 54,734.54
LPUSH per Second 70,422.54 52,994.17
RPUSH per Second 68,965.52 56,689.34
LPOP per Second 68,259.38 57,240.98
RPOP per Second 66,445.18 57,110.22
SADD per Second 69,492.70 55,401.66
HSET per Second 66,445.18 55,218.11
SPOP per Second 69,930.07 55,524.71
ZADD per Second 71,428.57 56,561.09
ZPOPMIN per Second 71,174.38 53,191.49
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 38,819.88 45,998.16
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 18,768.77 24,987.51
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 12,822.16 18,031.01
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 10,741.14 16,369.29
MSET (10 keys) per Second 61,387.36 54,884.74

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
PING_INLINE0.450.54
PING_MBULK0.440.53
SET0.470.55
GET0.480.55
INCR0.450.56
LPUSH0.460.58
RPUSH0.460.54
LPOP0.470.54
RPOP0.490.54
SADD0.460.55
HSET0.490.56
SPOP0.450.54
ZADD0.450.55
ZPOPMIN0.440.56
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.910.71
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.811.29
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)2.721.77
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)3.132.06
MSET (10 keys)0.650.65

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The DigitalOcean Premium AMD (2 GB) instance edges out the UpCloud Balanced (2 GB) in overall performance, particularly in CPU benchmarks where it registers higher Redis RPS values like 71225.07 for PING_INLINE and file I/O operations with faster throughput rates of 31.45 MiB per second reads and 20.97 MiB per second writes, compared to UpCloud's 58.85 MiB per second reads and 39.24 MiB per second writes. Opt for the DigitalOcean instance if you prioritize CPU-intensive or I/O-heavy tasks, balancing between cost and performance.

From the friendly human:

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