DigitalOcean Premium AMD (2 GB) vs. UpCloud Balanced (2 GB)
Same showdown, different day. Today I've spun up some brand new instance from DigitalOcean and UpCloud and ran my world famous suite of benchmarking scripts. Each instance was spun up with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and were created in the New York area (or close to it). Without further ado, here's the results.
Overview
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Last Benchmarked | Tue, 12 May 2026 21:00:52 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 | $14.00 | €13.00 |
| RAM (GB) | 2 | 2 |
| CPU Cores | 1 | 1 |
| Storage (TB) | 50 | 50 |
| Storage Type | NVMe | SSD |
| Transfer (TB) | 2 | 2 |
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 | 3,992.50 | 6,590.95 |
| Events per Second | 773.24 | 5,025.21 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.59 | 0.18 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 1.29 | 0.2 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 9.33 | 5.35 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 2.52 | 0.22 |
Memory
Memory Read
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Operations per second | 2,488,460.19 | 5,932,400.60 |
| Mebibytes per second | 2,430.14 | 5,793.36 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 4.04 | 2.22 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
Memory Write
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Operations per second | 4,683,187.88 | 6,706,599.41 |
| Mebibytes per second | 4,573.43 | 6,549.41 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 2.71 | 1.56 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
File I/O
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Reads per Second | 1,845.04 | 3,214.64 |
| Writes per Second | 1,230.03 | 2,143.03 |
| Fsyncs per Second | 3,937.98 | 6,864.71 |
| Read Mebibytes per Second | 28.83 | 50.23 |
| Written Mebibytes per Second | 19.22 | 33.48 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.14 | 0.08 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 17.63 | 20.14 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0.52 | 0.31 |
Mutex
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 1,667.72 | 1,349.13 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 1,679.59 | 1,353.60 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 1,689.52 | 1,361.99 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 1,678.14 | 1,352.03 |
MySQL
MySQL Read-only
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 6,277.00 | 19,090.00 |
| Queries per second | 62,770.00 | 190,900.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 1.39 | 0.31 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 1.59 | 0.52 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 3.05 | 5.34 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 2 | 0.64 |
MySQL Write-only
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 3,904.00 | 3,974.00 |
| Queries per second | 39,040.00 | 39,740.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 1.49 | 0.87 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 2.56 | 2.51 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 16.24 | 38.67 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 3.75 | 5 |
MySQL Read/Write
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 2,018.00 | 2,830.00 |
| Queries per second | 20,180.00 | 28,300.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 3.18 | 1.29 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 4.95 | 3.53 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 20.02 | 56.72 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 6.91 | 6.32 |
MySQL INSERT
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 5,620.00 | 4,647.00 |
| Queries per second | 56,200.00 | 46,470.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 1.05 | 0.61 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 1.78 | 2.15 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 16.02 | 28.58 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 2.97 | 4.41 |
MySQL Bulk INSERT
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 1,259,342.00 | 2,249,592.00 |
| Queries per second | 12,593,420.00 | 22,495,920.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.01 | 0 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 470.38 | 207.34 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
MySQL SELECT
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 139,730.00 | 645,161.00 |
| Queries per second | 1,397,300.00 | 6,451,610.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.06 | 0.01 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.07 | 0.02 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 0.87 | 2.26 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0.1 | 0.02 |
MySQL SELECT (Random Points)
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 6,629.00 | 8,546.00 |
| Queries per second | 66,290.00 | 85,460.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.52 | 0.13 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 1.51 | 1.17 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 7.6 | 172.57 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 2.14 | 1.58 |
MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 7,182.00 | 11,562.00 |
| Queries per second | 71,820.00 | 115,620.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.45 | 0.22 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 1.39 | 0.86 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 3.32 | 4.07 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 1.82 | 1.27 |
MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 5,947.00 | 4,711.00 |
| Queries per second | 59,470.00 | 47,110.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.88 | 0.73 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 1.68 | 2.12 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 23.74 | 30.41 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 2.57 | 3.96 |
MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 6,209.00 | 5,393.00 |
| Queries per second | 62,090.00 | 53,930.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 1.06 | 0.48 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 1.61 | 1.85 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 20.85 | 39 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 2.39 | 3.43 |
MySQL DELETE
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 44,794.00 | 101,195.00 |
| Queries per second | 447,940.00 | 1,011,950.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.06 | 0.01 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.22 | 0.1 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 16.86 | 39.3 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 1.42 | 0.17 |
Redis
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| PING_INLINE per Second | 39,729.84 | 130,208.34 |
| PING_MBULK per Second | 41,000.41 | 130,208.34 |
| SET per Second | 39,824.77 | 130,890.05 |
| GET per Second | 39,984.01 | 129,198.97 |
| INCR per Second | 39,184.95 | 128,534.70 |
| LPUSH per Second | 40,257.65 | 128,040.97 |
| RPUSH per Second | 39,936.10 | 126,582.27 |
| LPOP per Second | 39,777.25 | 124,688.28 |
| RPOP per Second | 38,865.14 | 127,226.46 |
| SADD per Second | 40,176.78 | 129,198.97 |
| HSET per Second | 36,995.93 | 133,511.34 |
| SPOP per Second | 39,184.95 | 139,275.77 |
| ZADD per Second | 39,339.10 | 130,039.02 |
| ZPOPMIN per Second | 41,050.90 | 129,701.68 |
| LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second | 26,702.27 | 55,524.71 |
| LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second | 14,887.60 | 28,785.26 |
| LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second | 10,069.48 | 18,942.98 |
| LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second | 9,017.13 | 17,038.68 |
| MSET (10 keys) per Second | 35,816.62 | 108,225.10 |
Redis Average Latency (ms)
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| PING_INLINE | 0.86 | 0.25 |
| PING_MBULK | 0.83 | 0.25 |
| SET | 0.86 | 0.26 |
| GET | 0.85 | 0.26 |
| INCR | 0.87 | 0.26 |
| LPUSH | 0.85 | 0.26 |
| RPUSH | 0.85 | 0.27 |
| LPOP | 0.86 | 0.27 |
| RPOP | 0.88 | 0.27 |
| SADD | 0.85 | 0.26 |
| HSET | 0.92 | 0.26 |
| SPOP | 0.87 | 0.24 |
| ZADD | 0.88 | 0.26 |
| ZPOPMIN | 0.83 | 0.26 |
| LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) | 1.31 | 0.66 |
| LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) | 2.40 | 1.27 |
| LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) | 3.52 | 1.95 |
| LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) | 3.96 | 2.16 |
| MSET (10 keys) | 0.98 | 0.34 |
Conclusion
From the friendly robots:
Comparing the two instances, UpCloud's Balanced (2 GB) outperforms DigitalOcean's Premium AMD (2 GB) in almost every benchmark metric, especially in CPU-intensive tasks where it showcases significantly higher RPS rates for Redis operations and superior overall performance in CPU metrics. File I/O operations also show UpCloud maintaining lower latencies and higher throughput, while memory benchmarks highlight better performance and lower latencies in read and write operations. MySQL benchmarks reflect similar advantages for UpCloud, with faster execution times in bulk inserts and various OLTP operations. DigitalOcean's instance, however, does excel in thread fairness and lower latencies for file I/O operations, as well as consistent thread execution times. For developers and sysadmins looking for a robust, high-performance VPS, UpCloud's Balanced (2 GB) is recommended for CPU-intensive, I/O-heavy workloads, while DigitalOcean's Premium AMD (2 GB) might be more suitable for scenarios where thread fairness and specific file I/O performance are critical.
From the friendly human:
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