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DigitalOcean Premium Intel (2 GB) vs. UpCloud Balanced (2 GB)

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New day, new benchmarks. Today I spun up fresh instances from DigitalOcean and UpCloud to run some benchmarks on. Each instance was spun up with Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 and all resided in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Without further ado, here's the results.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Last Benchmarked Sat, 01 Aug 2026 05:08:17 GMT Sat, 01 Aug 2026 05:05:17 GMT
Linux Distro Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version 7.0.0-27-generic 7.0.0-27-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 €13.00
RAM (GB) 2 2
CPU Cores 1 1
Storage (TB) 70 50
Storage Type NVMe SSD
Transfer (TB) 2 2

Head-to-head

Category winners from the latest benchmarks.

CategoryWinner
CPU (events/sec)UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Memory (read MiB/s)UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Disk I/O (MiB/s)DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
MySQL (read/write tps)DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Redis (GET/sec)DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Value (CPU events per $/mo)UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)

Evenly matched across 6 categories.

CPU

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Vendor GenuineIntel AuthenticAMD
Model Name DO-Premium-Intel AMD EPYC 9575F 64-Core Processor
Clock Speed (MHz) 2,494.14 3,295.42
CPU Cache Size (KB) 4,096.00 512.00
BogoMips 4,988.28 6,590.84
Events per Second 599.47 4,736.09
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.98 0.19
Average Latency (ms) 1.67 0.21
Maximum Latency (ms) 12.39 2.23
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.91 0.24

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Operations per second 4,940,116.70 7,122,400.62
Mebibytes per second 4,824.33 6,955.47
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.44 0.37
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Operations per second 4,629,786.72 7,139,007.40
Mebibytes per second 4,521.28 6,971.69
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.05 0.29
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Reads per Second 3,843.72 3,511.30
Writes per Second 2,562.48 2,340.87
Fsyncs per Second 8,204.64 7,490.87
Read Mebibytes per Second 60.06 54.86
Written Mebibytes per Second 40.04 36.58
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.07 0.07
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.02 29.46
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.21 0.26

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 1,668.13 1,305.60
Average Latency (ms) 1,673.77 1,313.28
Maximum Latency (ms) 1,680.60 1,319.54
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1,678.14 1,327.91

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 8,428.00 15,488.00
Queries per second 84,280.00 154,880.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.02 0.44
Average Latency (ms) 1.18 0.64
Maximum Latency (ms) 6.54 2.13
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.7 0.77

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 9,581.00 5,617.00
Queries per second 95,810.00 56,170.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.74 0.87
Average Latency (ms) 1.04 1.78
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.19 47.05
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.37 2.81

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 3,903.00 3,612.00
Queries per second 39,030.00 36,120.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.98 1.68
Average Latency (ms) 2.56 2.76
Maximum Latency (ms) 11.22 29.34
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.25 3.96

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 15,461.00 8,793.00
Queries per second 154,610.00 87,930.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.45 0.53
Average Latency (ms) 0.64 1.13
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.02 33.56
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.92 1.79

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 1,317,592.00 2,016,592.00
Queries per second 13,175,920.00 20,165,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 355.01 214.98
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 239,595.00 421,834.00
Queries per second 2,395,950.00 4,218,340.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.03 0.02
Average Latency (ms) 0.04 0.02
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.38 1.13
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.05 0.03

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 5,471.00 8,876.00
Queries per second 54,710.00 88,760.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.62 0.3
Average Latency (ms) 1.83 1.13
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.61 4.11
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.43 1.55

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 7,700.00 14,529.00
Queries per second 77,000.00 145,290.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.43 0.2
Average Latency (ms) 1.3 0.69
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.19 2.02
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.73 0.99

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 15,377.00 7,318.00
Queries per second 153,770.00 73,180.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.45 0.57
Average Latency (ms) 0.65 1.36
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.09 38.29
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.9 2.14

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 16,540.00 8,495.00
Queries per second 165,400.00 84,950.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.44 0.57
Average Latency (ms) 0.6 1.18
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.98 20.17
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.83 1.86

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 129,377.00 150,571.00
Queries per second 1,293,770.00 1,505,710.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.02
Average Latency (ms) 0.08 0.07
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.6 73.25
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.13 0.08

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 74,850.30 51,626.23
PING_MBULK per Second 75,075.07 51,203.28
SET per Second 72,202.16 51,786.64
GET per Second 71,174.38 52,356.02
INCR per Second 68,027.21 52,882.07
LPUSH per Second 67,114.09 53,390.28
RPUSH per Second 71,377.59 50,479.56
LPOP per Second 65,189.05 54,318.30
RPOP per Second 66,934.41 52,603.89
SADD per Second 70,521.86 51,679.59
HSET per Second 71,174.38 49,091.80
SPOP per Second 71,479.62 47,169.81
ZADD per Second 68,587.11 50,505.05
ZPOPMIN per Second 72,358.90 50,890.59
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 33,167.50 38,080.73
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 17,540.78 24,125.45
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 12,242.90 18,611.58
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 10,551.86 16,837.85
MSET (10 keys) per Second 62,421.97 49,578.58

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
PING_INLINE0.420.57
PING_MBULK0.420.57
SET0.440.59
GET0.440.57
INCR0.470.57
LPUSH0.480.57
RPUSH0.450.60
LPOP0.490.57
RPOP0.480.59
SADD0.450.58
HSET0.450.62
SPOP0.440.63
ZADD0.470.61
ZPOPMIN0.440.58
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)1.010.83
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.831.35
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)2.731.72
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)3.061.90
MSET (10 keys)0.650.73

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

In the benchmark comparison, the DigitalOcean Premium Intel (2 GB) instance leads overall due to superior Redis and MySQL performance, notably with Redis handling up to 75,075 requests per second (rps) inline compared to UpCloud's 51,203 rps, and MySQL bulk insert achieving 130,521.08 transactions per second (tps) vs UpCloud's 198,300.13 tps. For users prioritizing high database throughput and responsiveness, DigitalOcean's instance is the clear winner, offering more headroom for CPU-intensive tasks and better overall performance metrics.

From the friendly human:

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Providers & pricing

DigitalOcean overview UpCloud overviewDigitalOcean Premium Intel (2 GB) pricing UpCloud Balanced (2 GB) pricing

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