DigitalOcean Premium Intel (1 GB) vs. UpCloud Balanced (2 GB)
Welcome to another round of the VPS Showdown. 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 Intel (1 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Last Benchmarked
Sun, 10 May 2026 12:00:52 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
$8.00
€13.00
RAM (GB)
1
2
CPU Cores
1
1
Storage (TB)
35
50
Storage Type
NVMe
SSD
Transfer (TB)
1
2
CPU
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Vendor
GenuineIntel
AuthenticAMD
Model Name
DO-Premium-Intel
AMD EPYC 9575F 64-Core Processor
Clock Speed (MHz)
2,100.00
3,295.48
CPU Cache Size (KB)
4,096.00
512.00
BogoMips
4,200.00
6,590.95
Events per Second
1,123.72
5,025.21
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.44
0.18
Average Latency (ms)
0.89
0.2
Maximum Latency (ms)
3.74
5.35
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
2.07
0.22
Memory
Memory Read
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Operations per second
4,675,020.48
5,932,400.60
Mebibytes per second
4,565.45
5,793.36
Minimum Latency (ms)
0
0
Average Latency (ms)
0
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
0.2
2.22
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
0
0
Memory Write
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Operations per second
4,732,484.18
6,706,599.41
Mebibytes per second
4,621.57
6,549.41
Minimum Latency (ms)
0
0
Average Latency (ms)
0
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
0.16
1.56
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
0
0
File I/O
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Reads per Second
2,649.98
3,214.64
Writes per Second
1,766.65
2,143.03
Fsyncs per Second
5,662.79
6,864.71
Read Mebibytes per Second
41.41
50.23
Written Mebibytes per Second
27.60
33.48
Minimum Latency (ms)
0
0
Average Latency (ms)
0.1
0.08
Maximum Latency (ms)
5.52
20.14
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
0.34
0.31
Mutex
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms)
2,214.49
1,349.13
Average Latency (ms)
2,221.55
1,353.60
Maximum Latency (ms)
2,227.60
1,361.99
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
2,238.47
1,352.03
MySQL
MySQL Read-only
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second
8,882.00
19,090.00
Queries per second
88,820.00
190,900.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
1.01
0.31
Average Latency (ms)
1.12
0.52
Maximum Latency (ms)
3.83
5.34
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
1.61
0.64
MySQL Write-only
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second
5,611.00
3,974.00
Queries per second
56,110.00
39,740.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.94
0.87
Average Latency (ms)
1.78
2.51
Maximum Latency (ms)
15.35
38.67
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
2.66
5
MySQL Read/Write
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second
2,734.00
2,830.00
Queries per second
27,340.00
28,300.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
2.2
1.29
Average Latency (ms)
3.65
3.53
Maximum Latency (ms)
45.15
56.72
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
5.37
6.32
MySQL INSERT
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second
9,168.00
4,647.00
Queries per second
91,680.00
46,470.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.56
0.61
Average Latency (ms)
1.09
2.15
Maximum Latency (ms)
17.78
28.58
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
1.73
4.41
MySQL Bulk INSERT
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second
1,375,842.00
2,249,592.00
Queries per second
13,758,420.00
22,495,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0
0
Average Latency (ms)
0.01
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
392.83
207.34
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
0
0
MySQL SELECT
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second
254,408.00
645,161.00
Queries per second
2,544,080.00
6,451,610.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.03
0.01
Average Latency (ms)
0.04
0.02
Maximum Latency (ms)
1.24
2.26
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
0.05
0.02
MySQL SELECT (Random Points)
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second
6,839.00
8,546.00
Queries per second
68,390.00
85,460.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.48
0.13
Average Latency (ms)
1.46
1.17
Maximum Latency (ms)
4.84
172.57
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
1.93
1.58
MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second
8,318.00
11,562.00
Queries per second
83,180.00
115,620.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.42
0.22
Average Latency (ms)
1.2
0.86
Maximum Latency (ms)
3.52
4.07
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
1.58
1.27
MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second
9,033.00
4,711.00
Queries per second
90,330.00
47,110.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.55
0.73
Average Latency (ms)
1.11
2.12
Maximum Latency (ms)
10.79
30.41
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
1.76
3.96
MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second
9,456.00
5,393.00
Queries per second
94,560.00
53,930.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.53
0.48
Average Latency (ms)
1.06
1.85
Maximum Latency (ms)
9.47
39
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
1.55
3.43
MySQL DELETE
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second
123,722.00
101,195.00
Queries per second
1,237,220.00
1,011,950.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.03
0.01
Average Latency (ms)
0.08
0.1
Maximum Latency (ms)
15.71
39.3
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
0.12
0.17
Redis
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second
71,428.57
130,208.34
PING_MBULK per Second
73,583.52
130,208.34
SET per Second
71,326.68
130,890.05
GET per Second
73,421.44
129,198.97
INCR per Second
74,183.98
128,534.70
LPUSH per Second
72,463.77
128,040.97
RPUSH per Second
72,568.94
126,582.27
LPOP per Second
71,942.45
124,688.28
RPOP per Second
72,411.30
127,226.46
SADD per Second
72,992.70
129,198.97
HSET per Second
71,994.23
133,511.34
SPOP per Second
72,833.21
139,275.77
ZADD per Second
71,890.73
130,039.02
ZPOPMIN per Second
72,992.70
129,701.68
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second
40,749.80
55,524.71
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second
20,149.10
28,785.26
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second
12,981.96
18,942.98
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second
11,043.62
17,038.68
MSET (10 keys) per Second
63,331.22
108,225.10
Redis Average Latency (ms)
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
PING_INLINE
0.46
0.25
PING_MBULK
0.44
0.25
SET
0.45
0.26
GET
0.44
0.26
INCR
0.44
0.26
LPUSH
0.45
0.26
RPUSH
0.45
0.27
LPOP
0.46
0.27
RPOP
0.46
0.27
SADD
0.45
0.26
HSET
0.45
0.26
SPOP
0.44
0.24
ZADD
0.46
0.26
ZPOPMIN
0.45
0.26
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)
0.88
0.66
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)
1.79
1.27
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)
2.76
1.95
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)
3.21
2.16
MSET (10 keys)
0.56
0.34
Conclusion
From the friendly robots:
After analyzing the provided benchmarks for both DigitalOcean's Premium Intel (1 GB) and UpCloud's Balanced (2 GB) instances, it is clear that UpCloud's AMD EPYC-based configuration significantly outperforms the DigitalOcean instance in most metrics, especially in Redis benchmarks where it achieves higher request rates with lower latencies across various operations. The UpCloud instance also shows stronger performance in CPU-bound tasks, file I/O, and MySQL benchmarks, although DigitalOcean's instance has extremely low memory operation latencies, making it a better choice for latency-sensitive tasks. UpCloud's instance is better suited for workloads that benefit from higher CPU performance and larger memory, like complex computations or heavy database operations, whereas DigitalOcean's instance would be advantageous for tasks requiring ultra-low memory access times.
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.