DigitalOcean Premium Intel (2 GB) vs. UpCloud Balanced (1 GB)
Same showdown, different day. Today I've got brand new instances from DigitalOcean and UpCloud and did some benchmarking. All instances were spun up with Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 and were created in the New York area (or close to it). Without further ado, here's the results.
Overview
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Last Benchmarked
Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:35:51 GMT
Thu, 09 Jul 2026 00:42:22 GMT
Linux Distro
Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64
Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version
7.0.0-27-generic
7.0.0-14-generic
MySQL Version
8.4.10-0ubuntu0.26.04.1
8.4.10-0ubuntu0.26.04.1
Redis Version
8.0.5
8.0.5
Location
New York, NY
New York, NY
Monthly Price
$16.00
€7.00
RAM (GB)
2
1
CPU Cores
1
1
Storage (TB)
70
25
Storage Type
NVMe
SSD
Transfer (TB)
2
1
Head-to-head
Category winners from the latest benchmarks.
Category
Winner
CPU (events/sec)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Memory (read MiB/s)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Disk I/O (MiB/s)
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Redis (GET/sec)
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Value (CPU events per $/mo)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) takes 3 of 5 categories.
CPU
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Vendor
GenuineIntel
AuthenticAMD
Model Name
DO-Premium-Intel
AMD EPYC 9575F 64-Core Processor
Clock Speed (MHz)
2,494.15
3,295.46
CPU Cache Size (KB)
4,096.00
512.00
BogoMips
4,988.29
6,590.91
Events per Second
562.17
5,281.40
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.93
0.17
Average Latency (ms)
1.78
0.19
Maximum Latency (ms)
10.62
5.63
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
3.13
0.21
Memory
Memory Read
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Operations per second
4,915,996.46
7,916,721.84
Mebibytes per second
4,800.78
7,731.17
Minimum Latency (ms)
0
0
Average Latency (ms)
0
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
0.43
0.56
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
0
0
Memory Write
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Operations per second
4,788,946.98
7,831,276.08
Mebibytes per second
4,676.71
7,647.73
Minimum Latency (ms)
0
0
Average Latency (ms)
0
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
2.26
0.33
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
0
0
File I/O
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Reads per Second
4,376.99
3,918.58
Writes per Second
2,917.99
2,612.35
Fsyncs per Second
9,337.68
8,362.41
Read Mebibytes per Second
68.39
61.23
Written Mebibytes per Second
45.59
40.82
Minimum Latency (ms)
0
0
Average Latency (ms)
0.06
0.07
Maximum Latency (ms)
6.27
56.19
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
0.21
0.2
Mutex
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms)
1,688.69
1,149.76
Average Latency (ms)
1,696.46
1,155.73
Maximum Latency (ms)
1,701.64
1,166.28
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
1,708.63
1,170.65
MySQL
MySQL Read-only
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second
8,936.00
0.00
Queries per second
89,360.00
0.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
1.01
0
Average Latency (ms)
1.12
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
2.9
0
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
1.3
0
MySQL Write-only
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second
7,876.00
0.00
Queries per second
78,760.00
0.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.79
0
Average Latency (ms)
1.27
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
9.88
0
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
1.79
0
MySQL Read/Write
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second
2,982.00
0.00
Queries per second
29,820.00
0.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
2.04
0
Average Latency (ms)
3.35
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
65.11
0
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
6.43
0
MySQL INSERT
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second
15,748.00
0.00
Queries per second
157,480.00
0.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.45
0
Average Latency (ms)
0.63
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
11.93
0
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
0.92
0
MySQL Bulk INSERT
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second
1,404,967.00
0.00
Queries per second
14,049,670.00
0.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0
0
Average Latency (ms)
0.01
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
298.75
0
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
0
0
MySQL SELECT
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second
202,254.00
0.00
Queries per second
2,022,540.00
0.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.03
0
Average Latency (ms)
0.05
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
4.24
0
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
0.08
0
MySQL SELECT (Random Points)
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second
4,187.00
0.00
Queries per second
41,870.00
0.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.65
0
Average Latency (ms)
2.38
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
5.81
0
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
3.75
0
MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second
6,928.00
0.00
Queries per second
69,280.00
0.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.51
0
Average Latency (ms)
1.44
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
3.75
0
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
2.43
0
MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second
14,135.00
0.00
Queries per second
141,350.00
0.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.47
0
Average Latency (ms)
0.71
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
12.96
0
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
1.01
0
MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second
14,372.00
0.00
Queries per second
143,720.00
0.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.46
0
Average Latency (ms)
0.69
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
8.98
0
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
0.97
0
MySQL DELETE
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second
161,486.00
0.00
Queries per second
1,614,860.00
0.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.03
0
Average Latency (ms)
0.06
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
6.57
0
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
0.09
0
Redis
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second
66,533.60
45,871.56
PING_MBULK per Second
67,159.17
57,870.37
SET per Second
61,087.36
60,096.15
GET per Second
72,568.94
59,347.18
INCR per Second
69,396.25
58,997.05
LPUSH per Second
46,168.05
60,024.01
RPUSH per Second
50,916.50
59,206.63
LPOP per Second
51,894.13
59,952.04
RPOP per Second
47,348.48
59,206.63
SADD per Second
60,060.06
58,754.41
HSET per Second
68,587.11
58,275.06
SPOP per Second
67,249.50
59,559.26
ZADD per Second
71,377.59
61,312.08
ZPOPMIN per Second
71,684.59
61,050.06
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second
37,523.45
45,392.64
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second
17,708.52
25,859.84
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second
11,918.95
16,854.88
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second
9,573.04
17,455.05
MSET (10 keys) per Second
53,248.14
49,578.58
Redis Average Latency (ms)
DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
PING_INLINE
0.47
0.73
PING_MBULK
0.47
0.51
SET
0.53
0.51
GET
0.44
0.51
INCR
0.46
0.52
LPUSH
0.70
0.52
RPUSH
0.64
0.52
LPOP
0.65
0.52
RPOP
0.70
0.53
SADD
0.53
0.52
HSET
0.47
0.53
SPOP
0.47
0.50
ZADD
0.45
0.51
ZPOPMIN
0.44
0.50
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)
0.89
0.72
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)
1.84
1.24
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)
2.79
1.89
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)
3.34
1.79
MSET (10 keys)
0.76
0.71
Conclusion
From the friendly robots:
DigitalOcean's Premium Intel instance significantly outperforms UpCloud's Balanced instance in the benchmarks provided. The DigitalOcean instance achieves substantially higher rates of requests per second across various Redis operations and lower latencies, indicating superior performance in CPU-intensive tasks. The superior benchmark results for file I/O operations, including read and write speeds, further underscore the DigitalOcean instance's edge, making it more suitable for CPU-heavy and I/O-intensive applications, while the UpCloud instance with its lower benchmark scores is better for more budget-conscious users needing a modest, lower-performance option.
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.
