DigitalOcean Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) vs. UpCloud Balanced (2 GB, 2 Cores)

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My friend, I'm so glad you're here! Today I've spun up some brand new instance from DigitalOcean and UpCloud and did some benchmarking. All instances were spun up with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and all resided in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Enough talk. Here's the data.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Last Benchmarked Sun, 31 May 2026 20:00:52 GMT Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:52 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 $56.00 €18.00
RAM (GB) 8 2
CPU Cores 4 2
Storage (TB) 160 60
Storage Type NVMe SSD
Transfer (TB) 5 3

CPU

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Vendor AuthenticAMD AuthenticAMD
Model Name DO-Premium-AMD AMD EPYC 9575F 64-Core Processor
Clock Speed (MHz) 1,996.25 3,295.46
CPU Cache Size (KB) 512.00 512.00
BogoMips 3,992.50 6,590.91
Events per Second 1,535.42 5,642.42
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.59 0.16
Average Latency (ms) 0.65 0.18
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.89 0.72
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.69 0.19

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Operations per second 4,867,578.39 8,011,236.04
Mebibytes per second 4,753.49 7,823.47
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.19 0.12
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Operations per second 4,347,879.44 7,931,251.63
Mebibytes per second 4,245.98 7,745.36
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.56 0.11
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Reads per Second 2,384.51 5,398.58
Writes per Second 1,589.67 3,599.06
Fsyncs per Second 5,095.64 11,528.98
Read Mebibytes per Second 37.26 84.35
Written Mebibytes per Second 24.84 56.24
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.11 0.05
Maximum Latency (ms) 9.42 42.79
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.58 0.2

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Minimum Latency (ms) 325.10 602.81
Average Latency (ms) 435.66 614.50
Maximum Latency (ms) 487.90 628.36
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 484.44 623.33

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 5,392.00 24,612.00
Queries per second 53,920.00 246,120.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.37 0.28
Average Latency (ms) 1.85 0.41
Maximum Latency (ms) 3 5.49
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.35 0.54

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 3,296.00 8,113.00
Queries per second 32,960.00 81,130.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.47 0.57
Average Latency (ms) 3.03 1.23
Maximum Latency (ms) 19.45 18.46
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.41 1.7

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 1,930.00 5,128.00
Queries per second 19,300.00 51,280.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 3.41 0.98
Average Latency (ms) 5.18 1.95
Maximum Latency (ms) 26.77 18.69
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 6.55 3.3

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 4,756.00 10,989.00
Queries per second 47,560.00 109,890.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.08 0.38
Average Latency (ms) 2.1 0.91
Maximum Latency (ms) 40.66 15.68
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.25 1.27

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 1,434,092.00 3,356,342.00
Queries per second 14,340,920.00 33,563,420.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 418.16 198.86
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 125,686.00 703,024.00
Queries per second 1,256,860.00 7,030,240.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.05 0.01
Average Latency (ms) 0.08 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.84 0.67
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.11 0.02

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 7,055.00 18,136.00
Queries per second 70,550.00 181,360.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.33 0.1
Average Latency (ms) 1.42 0.55
Maximum Latency (ms) 7.12 2.01
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.07 0.86

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 6,592.00 17,953.00
Queries per second 65,920.00 179,530.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.43 0.17
Average Latency (ms) 1.52 0.56
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.28 2.02
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.03 0.87

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 5,138.00 10,440.00
Queries per second 51,380.00 104,400.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.07 0.41
Average Latency (ms) 1.94 0.96
Maximum Latency (ms) 39.78 25.42
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.81 1.34

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 4,781.00 10,933.00
Queries per second 47,810.00 109,330.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.13 0.38
Average Latency (ms) 2.09 0.91
Maximum Latency (ms) 19.23 25.95
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.07 1.27

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 41,513.00 332,632.00
Queries per second 415,130.00 3,326,320.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.05 0.01
Average Latency (ms) 0.24 0.03
Maximum Latency (ms) 11.7 26.59
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.67 0.03

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB, 2 Cores)
PING_INLINE per Second 62,073.25 142,045.45
PING_MBULK per Second 58,719.91 131,061.59
SET per Second 54,171.18 165,016.50
GET per Second 64,308.68 142,857.14
INCR per Second 55,648.30 196,850.39
LPUSH per Second 55,493.89 249,376.56
RPUSH per Second 52,938.06 248,756.22
LPOP per Second 62,539.09 255,754.47
RPOP per Second 66,269.05 263,852.25
SADD per Second 62,189.05 251,889.16
HSET per Second 55,157.20 265,957.47
SPOP per Second 54,674.69 253,807.11
ZADD per Second 55,035.77 257,731.95
ZPOPMIN per Second 55,035.77 255,102.05
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 37,355.25 158,478.61
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 21,715.53 72,358.90
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 16,084.93 46,992.48
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 14,990.26 34,258.31
MSET (10 keys) per Second 57,770.08 244,498.77

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB, 2 Cores)
PING_INLINE0.420.21
PING_MBULK0.440.20
SET0.480.17
GET0.400.20
INCR0.470.14
LPUSH0.470.11
RPUSH0.490.11
LPOP0.420.11
RPOP0.390.10
SADD0.420.10
HSET0.470.10
SPOP0.470.10
ZADD0.480.10
ZPOPMIN0.470.10
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.780.19
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.260.39
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)1.710.59
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)1.910.88
MSET (10 keys)0.470.15

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

Comparing the two instances, DigitalOcean's Premium AMD offers higher performance in CPU and memory operations, with significantly better throughput and lower latency in Redis benchmarks, making it ideal for CPU-intensive and high-memory workloads. UpCloud's Balanced instance, while powerful for its two cores, shows superior performance in terms of raw Redis command execution rates and memory operations, making it a better choice for applications that prioritize high command execution rates and can operate with lower memory and CPU requirements. Both instances have high throughput in file I/O operations, but UpCloud leads in raw speed metrics for Redis, making it suitable for applications requiring high command execution rates over raw computational throughput.

From the friendly human:

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