DigitalOcean Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) vs. UpCloud Balanced (1 GB)

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My friend, I'm so glad you're here! Today I've spun up brand new instance from DigitalOcean and UpCloud to run some benchmarks on. Each instance was running Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and were created in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Time to see who showed up today.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Last Benchmarked Tue, 02 Jun 2026 06:00:52 GMT Sun, 31 May 2026 22:00:51 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 $64.00 €7.00
RAM (GB) 8 1
CPU Cores 4 1
Storage (TB) 240 25
Storage Type NVMe SSD
Transfer (TB) 6 1

CPU

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Vendor GenuineIntel AuthenticAMD
Model Name DO-Premium-Intel AMD EPYC 9575F 64-Core Processor
Clock Speed (MHz) 1,995.31 3,295.46
CPU Cache Size (KB) 4,096.00 512.00
BogoMips 3,990.61 6,590.91
Events per Second 2,100.00 5,794.96
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.46 0.16
Average Latency (ms) 0.48 0.17
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.77 1.23
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.49 0.18

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Operations per second 4,031,036.30 8,052,564.60
Mebibytes per second 3,936.56 7,863.83
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.09 1.04
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Operations per second 4,327,248.72 7,948,457.28
Mebibytes per second 4,225.83 7,762.17
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.18 1.02
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Reads per Second 1,848.36 4,287.35
Writes per Second 1,232.24 2,858.23
Fsyncs per Second 3,943.27 9,154.54
Read Mebibytes per Second 28.88 66.99
Written Mebibytes per Second 19.25 44.66
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.14 0.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 32.73 31.06
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.83 0.21

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 496.91 1,119.74
Average Latency (ms) 678.09 1,130.13
Maximum Latency (ms) 755.25 1,135.70
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 759.88 1,129.24

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second 5,172.00 25,948.00
Queries per second 51,720.00 259,480.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.28 0.28
Average Latency (ms) 1.93 0.38
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.32 6.93
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.61 0.55

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second 2,301.00 8,119.00
Queries per second 23,010.00 81,190.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.35 0.55
Average Latency (ms) 4.34 1.23
Maximum Latency (ms) 12.64 21.4
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 7.3 2.14

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second 1,495.00 5,957.00
Queries per second 14,950.00 59,570.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.89 0.96
Average Latency (ms) 6.68 1.68
Maximum Latency (ms) 19.01 25.41
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 10.46 2.26

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second 3,010.00 9,228.00
Queries per second 30,100.00 92,280.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.11 0.4
Average Latency (ms) 3.32 1.08
Maximum Latency (ms) 14.62 122.36
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 6.09 1.73

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second 1,201,092.00 3,239,842.00
Queries per second 12,010,920.00 32,398,420.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 566.03 164.27
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second 157,927.00 795,867.00
Queries per second 1,579,270.00 7,958,670.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.01
Average Latency (ms) 0.06 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.99 1.71
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.09 0.02

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second 5,434.00 16,199.00
Queries per second 54,340.00 161,990.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.45 0.12
Average Latency (ms) 1.84 0.62
Maximum Latency (ms) 14.81 117.1
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.71 0.97

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second 6,582.00 19,217.00
Queries per second 65,820.00 192,170.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.57 0.16
Average Latency (ms) 1.52 0.52
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.15 3.51
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.66 0.8

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second 3,033.00 11,047.00
Queries per second 30,330.00 110,470.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1 0.38
Average Latency (ms) 3.29 0.9
Maximum Latency (ms) 67.75 68.36
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5.99 1.34

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second 3,268.00 11,479.00
Queries per second 32,680.00 114,790.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.03 0.36
Average Latency (ms) 3.06 0.87
Maximum Latency (ms) 11.49 55.99
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5.57 1.25

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second 24,924.00 421,206.00
Queries per second 249,240.00 4,212,060.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.01
Average Latency (ms) 0.4 0.02
Maximum Latency (ms) 26.64 39.7
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.81 0.02

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 93,545.37 171,821.30
PING_MBULK per Second 87,796.30 175,438.59
SET per Second 93,457.94 161,290.33
GET per Second 94,250.71 166,112.95
INCR per Second 85,106.38 173,913.05
LPUSH per Second 95,057.03 161,030.59
RPUSH per Second 86,505.19 171,526.58
LPOP per Second 89,285.71 170,648.45
RPOP per Second 100,100.10 169,491.53
SADD per Second 90,661.83 161,812.31
HSET per Second 90,415.91 156,006.25
SPOP per Second 96,432.02 168,067.22
ZADD per Second 97,751.71 149,700.61
ZPOPMIN per Second 97,751.71 166,389.34
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 58,997.05 88,967.98
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 26,191.72 40,257.65
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 15,961.69 28,490.03
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 14,390.56 25,056.38
MSET (10 keys) per Second 73,152.89 154,320.98

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
PING_INLINE0.280.19
PING_MBULK0.310.19
SET0.310.21
GET0.280.20
INCR0.310.19
LPUSH0.290.21
RPUSH0.320.20
LPOP0.320.20
RPOP0.270.20
SADD0.320.21
HSET0.290.22
SPOP0.300.20
ZADD0.310.23
ZPOPMIN0.280.20
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.460.41
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.050.89
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)2.041.26
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)2.121.43
MSET (10 keys)0.490.23

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

After comparing the benchmarks for the DigitalOcean Premium Intel instance and the UpCloud Balanced instance, it's clear that the DigitalOcean instance excels in handling higher workload scenarios due to its 4 CPU cores and 8GB of RAM, enabling it to achieve superior performance in CPU-intensive and memory-demanding tasks, as evidenced by its high Redis RPS and low latency across most operations. Meanwhile, the UpCloud instance, despite having a single powerful CPU core, offers significant advantages in terms of raw computational power per core and cost-effectiveness for lighter workloads, showcasing higher RPS for Redis operations but generally higher latencies. For developers and sysadmins needing high throughput and low latency for CPU-intensive tasks, the DigitalOcean instance is the better choice, whereas the UpCloud instance might be more suitable for less demanding applications and those looking for better performance per dollar.

From the friendly human:

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