DigitalOcean Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) vs. UpCloud Balanced (2 GB)
My friend, I'm so glad you're here! Today I've spun up brand new instance from DigitalOcean and UpCloud and did some benchmarking. Each instance was spun up with Ubuntu 24.04 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 (4 GB, 2 Cores) | UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Last Benchmarked | Mon, 11 May 2026 18:00:53 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 | $28.00 | €13.00 |
| RAM (GB) | 4 | 2 |
| CPU Cores | 2 | 1 |
| Storage (TB) | 80 | 50 |
| Storage Type | NVMe | SSD |
| Transfer (TB) | 2 | 2 |
CPU
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) | 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 | 1,048.70 | 5,025.21 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.64 | 0.18 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.95 | 0.2 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 7.41 | 5.35 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 2.76 | 0.22 |
Memory
Memory Read
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) | UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Operations per second | 4,138,415.98 | 5,932,400.60 |
| Mebibytes per second | 4,041.42 | 5,793.36 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 6.71 | 2.22 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
Memory Write
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) | UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Operations per second | 4,558,150.63 | 6,706,599.41 |
| Mebibytes per second | 4,451.32 | 6,549.41 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 0.24 | 1.56 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
File I/O
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) | UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Reads per Second | 1,623.20 | 3,214.64 |
| Writes per Second | 1,082.14 | 2,143.03 |
| Fsyncs per Second | 3,468.23 | 6,864.71 |
| Read Mebibytes per Second | 25.36 | 50.23 |
| Written Mebibytes per Second | 16.91 | 33.48 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.16 | 0.08 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 8.73 | 20.14 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0.63 | 0.31 |
Mutex
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) | UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 886.01 | 1,349.13 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 989.64 | 1,353.60 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 1,026.93 | 1,361.99 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 1,032.01 | 1,352.03 |
MySQL
MySQL Read-only
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) | UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 4,989.00 | 19,090.00 |
| Queries per second | 49,890.00 | 190,900.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 1.45 | 0.31 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 2 | 0.52 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 4.41 | 5.34 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 2.57 | 0.64 |
MySQL Write-only
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) | UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 2,798.00 | 3,974.00 |
| Queries per second | 27,980.00 | 39,740.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 1.66 | 0.87 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 3.57 | 2.51 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 21.45 | 38.67 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 5.57 | 5 |
MySQL Read/Write
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) | UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 1,530.00 | 2,830.00 |
| Queries per second | 15,300.00 | 28,300.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 3.58 | 1.29 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 6.53 | 3.53 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 31.77 | 56.72 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 10.27 | 6.32 |
MySQL INSERT
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) | UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 3,730.00 | 4,647.00 |
| Queries per second | 37,300.00 | 46,470.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 1.11 | 0.61 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 2.68 | 2.15 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 14.01 | 28.58 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 4.57 | 4.41 |
MySQL Bulk INSERT
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) | 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) | 491.29 | 207.34 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
MySQL SELECT
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) | UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 106,801.00 | 645,161.00 |
| Queries per second | 1,068,010.00 | 6,451,610.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.05 | 0.01 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.09 | 0.02 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 1.28 | 2.26 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0.13 | 0.02 |
MySQL SELECT (Random Points)
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) | UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 6,211.00 | 8,546.00 |
| Queries per second | 62,110.00 | 85,460.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.5 | 0.13 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 1.61 | 1.17 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 8.41 | 172.57 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 2.35 | 1.58 |
MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) | UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 5,787.00 | 11,562.00 |
| Queries per second | 57,870.00 | 115,620.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.67 | 0.22 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 1.73 | 0.86 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 3.58 | 4.07 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 2.35 | 1.27 |
MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) | UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 3,618.00 | 4,711.00 |
| Queries per second | 36,180.00 | 47,110.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 1.15 | 0.73 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 2.76 | 2.12 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 17.67 | 30.41 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 4.82 | 3.96 |
MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) | UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 3,766.00 | 5,393.00 |
| Queries per second | 37,660.00 | 53,930.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 1.29 | 0.48 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 2.65 | 1.85 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 17.38 | 39 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 4.41 | 3.43 |
MySQL DELETE
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) | UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 28,987.00 | 101,195.00 |
| Queries per second | 289,870.00 | 1,011,950.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.05 | 0.01 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.34 | 0.1 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 16.85 | 39.3 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 2.22 | 0.17 |
Redis
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) | UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| PING_INLINE per Second | 57,372.34 | 130,208.34 |
| PING_MBULK per Second | 55,309.73 | 130,208.34 |
| SET per Second | 57,142.86 | 130,890.05 |
| GET per Second | 55,493.89 | 129,198.97 |
| INCR per Second | 59,488.40 | 128,534.70 |
| LPUSH per Second | 58,105.75 | 128,040.97 |
| RPUSH per Second | 60,422.96 | 126,582.27 |
| LPOP per Second | 57,703.40 | 124,688.28 |
| RPOP per Second | 52,854.12 | 127,226.46 |
| SADD per Second | 54,614.96 | 129,198.97 |
| HSET per Second | 55,432.37 | 133,511.34 |
| SPOP per Second | 58,858.15 | 139,275.77 |
| ZADD per Second | 57,273.77 | 130,039.02 |
| ZPOPMIN per Second | 57,570.52 | 129,701.68 |
| LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second | 35,778.18 | 55,524.71 |
| LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second | 19,638.65 | 28,785.26 |
| LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second | 14,444.61 | 18,942.98 |
| LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second | 12,823.80 | 17,038.68 |
| MSET (10 keys) per Second | 47,596.38 | 108,225.10 |
Redis Average Latency (ms)
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) | UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| PING_INLINE | 0.45 | 0.25 |
| PING_MBULK | 0.47 | 0.25 |
| SET | 0.45 | 0.26 |
| GET | 0.47 | 0.26 |
| INCR | 0.44 | 0.26 |
| LPUSH | 0.45 | 0.26 |
| RPUSH | 0.43 | 0.27 |
| LPOP | 0.45 | 0.27 |
| RPOP | 0.50 | 0.27 |
| SADD | 0.47 | 0.26 |
| HSET | 0.47 | 0.26 |
| SPOP | 0.44 | 0.24 |
| ZADD | 0.45 | 0.26 |
| ZPOPMIN | 0.45 | 0.26 |
| LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) | 0.79 | 0.66 |
| LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) | 1.37 | 1.27 |
| LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) | 2.03 | 1.95 |
| LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) | 2.13 | 2.16 |
| MSET (10 keys) | 0.68 | 0.34 |
Conclusion
From the friendly robots:
After a thorough analysis of the benchmarks for the two VPS configurations, it's clear that the UpCloud Balanced (1 CPU, 2 GB RAM) instance outperforms the DigitalOcean Premium AMD (2 CPU, 4 GB RAM) instance in several key areas. The UpCloud instance excels in Redis benchmarks with significantly higher request per second (rps) rates and lower latencies across various commands. CPU benchmarks also show superior performance with higher events per second and lower latency. File I/O and memory benchmarks demonstrate strong throughput and low latencies for both read and write operations. MySQL benchmarks for UpCloud show quicker responses in most operations, though DigitalOcean handles CPU-intensive tasks slightly better. Given these results, the UpCloud instance is ideal for workloads that benefit from high single-core performance and low latencies, such as high-traffic web services, database operations, and I/O-heavy tasks. Conversely, the DigitalOcean instance, with its double CPU cores and solid performance in CPU-intensive benchmarks, is better suited for environments that require more parallel processing capabilities, such as complex computational tasks or systems needing higher CPU throughput.
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.
You can also support me directly by buying me a coffee.