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

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Fresh benchmarks coming at ya. Today I've spun up brand new instance from DigitalOcean and UpCloud and ran some benchmarks. 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)
Last Benchmarked Wed, 13 May 2026 09:00:52 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 $56.00 €13.00
RAM (GB) 8 2
CPU Cores 4 1
Storage (TB) 160 50
Storage Type NVMe SSD
Transfer (TB) 5 2

CPU

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 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 1,440.13 5,025.21
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.62 0.18
Average Latency (ms) 0.69 0.2
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.99 5.35
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.74 0.22

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Operations per second 4,607,623.18 5,932,400.60
Mebibytes per second 4,499.63 5,793.36
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.25 2.22
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Operations per second 4,250,543.24 6,706,599.41
Mebibytes per second 4,150.92 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 (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Reads per Second 2,071.41 3,214.64
Writes per Second 1,380.94 2,143.03
Fsyncs per Second 4,423.81 6,864.71
Read Mebibytes per Second 32.37 50.23
Written Mebibytes per Second 21.58 33.48
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.13 0.08
Maximum Latency (ms) 11.5 20.14
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.63 0.31

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 387.26 1,349.13
Average Latency (ms) 503.53 1,353.60
Maximum Latency (ms) 571.47 1,361.99
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 569.67 1,352.03

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 5,335.00 19,090.00
Queries per second 53,350.00 190,900.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.35 0.31
Average Latency (ms) 1.87 0.52
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.01 5.34
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.39 0.64

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 2,633.00 3,974.00
Queries per second 26,330.00 39,740.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.64 0.87
Average Latency (ms) 3.79 2.51
Maximum Latency (ms) 17.49 38.67
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5.88 5

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 1,598.00 2,830.00
Queries per second 15,980.00 28,300.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.99 1.29
Average Latency (ms) 6.25 3.53
Maximum Latency (ms) 47.79 56.72
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 9.39 6.32

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 3,813.00 4,647.00
Queries per second 38,130.00 46,470.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.33 0.61
Average Latency (ms) 2.62 2.15
Maximum Latency (ms) 21.61 28.58
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.33 4.41

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 1,317,592.00 2,249,592.00
Queries per second 13,175,920.00 22,495,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 494.55 207.34
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 128,652.00 645,161.00
Queries per second 1,286,520.00 6,451,610.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.05 0.01
Average Latency (ms) 0.08 0.02
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.43 2.26
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.11 0.02

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 6,602.00 8,546.00
Queries per second 66,020.00 85,460.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.51 0.13
Average Latency (ms) 1.51 1.17
Maximum Latency (ms) 9.03 172.57
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.14 1.58

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 6,138.00 11,562.00
Queries per second 61,380.00 115,620.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.54 0.22
Average Latency (ms) 1.63 0.86
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.46 4.07
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.18 1.27

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 4,416.00 4,711.00
Queries per second 44,160.00 47,110.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.05 0.73
Average Latency (ms) 2.26 2.12
Maximum Latency (ms) 16.43 30.41
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.49 3.96

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 3,561.00 5,393.00
Queries per second 35,610.00 53,930.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.35 0.48
Average Latency (ms) 2.81 1.85
Maximum Latency (ms) 32.29 39
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.41 3.43

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 25,316.00 101,195.00
Queries per second 253,160.00 1,011,950.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.05 0.01
Average Latency (ms) 0.39 0.1
Maximum Latency (ms) 24.37 39.3
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.48 0.17

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 50,025.02 130,208.34
PING_MBULK per Second 48,123.20 130,208.34
SET per Second 54,318.30 130,890.05
GET per Second 50,428.64 129,198.97
INCR per Second 48,851.98 128,534.70
LPUSH per Second 50,327.12 128,040.97
RPUSH per Second 49,164.21 126,582.27
LPOP per Second 48,590.86 124,688.28
RPOP per Second 51,519.84 127,226.46
SADD per Second 50,607.29 129,198.97
HSET per Second 60,532.69 133,511.34
SPOP per Second 60,975.61 139,275.77
ZADD per Second 56,433.41 130,039.02
ZPOPMIN per Second 49,800.80 129,701.68
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 36,710.72 55,524.71
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 22,624.43 28,785.26
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 17,003.91 18,942.98
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 14,465.50 17,038.68
MSET (10 keys) per Second 51,440.33 108,225.10

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
PING_INLINE0.530.25
PING_MBULK0.540.25
SET0.480.26
GET0.510.26
INCR0.540.26
LPUSH0.520.26
RPUSH0.530.27
LPOP0.540.27
RPOP0.510.27
SADD0.520.26
HSET0.430.26
SPOP0.430.24
ZADD0.460.26
ZPOPMIN0.520.26
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.790.66
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.251.27
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)1.621.95
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)1.912.16
MSET (10 keys)0.520.34

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The DigitalOcean Premium AMD instance shows strong performance in memory and CPU benchmarks, delivering high throughput for memory operations and respectable latency across various CPU tasks. In contrast, the UpCloud Balanced instance, despite having a single core, excels in Redis benchmarks with significantly higher request rates and lower latencies, and shows strong performance in memory operations and file I/O tasks. The DigitalOcean instance provides more CPU power and is better suited for workloads that demand high concurrency and CPU-intensive tasks, while the UpCloud instance shines in scenarios requiring high-speed Redis operations and has adequate memory performance for general purposes, making it suitable for less CPU-heavy applications.

From the friendly human:

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