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

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New day, new benchmarks. 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. Without further ado, here's the results.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Last Benchmarked Tue, 02 Jun 2026 06:00:52 GMT Mon, 01 Jun 2026 17:00:52 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 $64.00 €26.00
RAM (GB) 8 4
CPU Cores 4 2
Storage (TB) 240 80
Storage Type NVMe SSD
Transfer (TB) 6 4

CPU

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (4 GB, 2 Cores)
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 5,538.02
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.46 0.16
Average Latency (ms) 0.48 0.18
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.77 0.43
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.49 0.19

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Operations per second 4,031,036.30 7,744,795.06
Mebibytes per second 3,936.56 7,563.28
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.09 0.11
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Operations per second 4,327,248.72 7,915,291.33
Mebibytes per second 4,225.83 7,729.78
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.18 0.1
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Reads per Second 1,848.36 5,263.44
Writes per Second 1,232.24 3,508.96
Fsyncs per Second 3,943.27 11,231.28
Read Mebibytes per Second 28.88 82.24
Written Mebibytes per Second 19.25 54.83
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.14 0.05
Maximum Latency (ms) 32.73 30.56
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.83 0.19

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Minimum Latency (ms) 496.91 519.77
Average Latency (ms) 678.09 597.61
Maximum Latency (ms) 755.25 637.22
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 759.88 634.66

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 5,172.00 19,719.00
Queries per second 51,720.00 197,190.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.28 0.34
Average Latency (ms) 1.93 0.51
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.32 1.29
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.61 0.63

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 2,301.00 6,768.00
Queries per second 23,010.00 67,680.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.35 0.63
Average Latency (ms) 4.34 1.48
Maximum Latency (ms) 12.64 50.87
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 7.3 2.14

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 1,495.00 4,707.00
Queries per second 14,950.00 47,070.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.89 1.08
Average Latency (ms) 6.68 2.12
Maximum Latency (ms) 19.01 37.62
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 10.46 2.97

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 3,010.00 7,393.00
Queries per second 30,100.00 73,930.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.11 0.44
Average Latency (ms) 3.32 1.35
Maximum Latency (ms) 14.62 63.1
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 6.09 1.7

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 1,201,092.00 3,356,342.00
Queries per second 12,010,920.00 33,563,420.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 566.03 151.04
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 157,927.00 592,464.00
Queries per second 1,579,270.00 5,924,640.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.01
Average Latency (ms) 0.06 0.02
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.99 10.21
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.09 0.02

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 5,434.00 12,203.00
Queries per second 54,340.00 122,030.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.45 0.25
Average Latency (ms) 1.84 0.82
Maximum Latency (ms) 14.81 11.39
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.71 1.21

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 6,582.00 16,394.00
Queries per second 65,820.00 163,940.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.57 0.13
Average Latency (ms) 1.52 0.61
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.15 1.5
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.66 0.97

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 3,033.00 8,134.00
Queries per second 30,330.00 81,340.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1 0.45
Average Latency (ms) 3.29 1.23
Maximum Latency (ms) 67.75 30.98
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5.99 1.73

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 3,268.00 7,953.00
Queries per second 32,680.00 79,530.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.03 0.45
Average Latency (ms) 3.06 1.26
Maximum Latency (ms) 11.49 76.32
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5.57 1.86

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 24,924.00 245,730.00
Queries per second 249,240.00 2,457,300.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.01
Average Latency (ms) 0.4 0.04
Maximum Latency (ms) 26.64 112.01
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.81 0.04

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (4 GB, 2 Cores)
PING_INLINE per Second 93,545.37 210,084.03
PING_MBULK per Second 87,796.30 251,889.16
SET per Second 93,457.94 258,397.94
GET per Second 94,250.71 239,808.16
INCR per Second 85,106.38 268,096.53
LPUSH per Second 95,057.03 267,379.66
RPUSH per Second 86,505.19 263,157.91
LPOP per Second 89,285.71 272,479.56
RPOP per Second 100,100.10 274,725.28
SADD per Second 90,661.83 269,541.78
HSET per Second 90,415.91 246,305.42
SPOP per Second 96,432.02 256,410.27
ZADD per Second 97,751.71 252,525.25
ZPOPMIN per Second 97,751.71 247,524.75
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 58,997.05 147,275.41
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 26,191.72 59,136.61
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 15,961.69 38,850.04
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 14,390.56 38,461.54
MSET (10 keys) per Second 73,152.89 220,264.31

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) UpCloud – Balanced (4 GB, 2 Cores)
PING_INLINE0.280.16
PING_MBULK0.310.11
SET0.310.11
GET0.280.11
INCR0.310.12
LPUSH0.290.13
RPUSH0.320.10
LPOP0.320.11
RPOP0.270.10
SADD0.320.10
HSET0.290.11
SPOP0.300.10
ZADD0.310.11
ZPOPMIN0.280.11
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.460.24
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.050.48
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)2.040.67
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)2.120.72
MSET (10 keys)0.490.18

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

Comparing the benchmark performance of the DigitalOcean Premium Intel and the UpCloud Balanced instances reveals that the UpCloud instance offers higher throughput in various metrics, especially in Redis benchmarks where it achieves significantly higher requests per second across all commands. However, the DigitalOcean instance provides slightly better CPU and memory performance, along with lower latency for most memory operations. When considering ideal use cases, the UpCloud instance is well-suited for high-traffic, I/O-intensive workloads that benefit from increased CPU throughput, such as large-scale data processing and high-volume Redis operations. Conversely, the DigitalOcean instance is more appropriate for scenarios requiring robust memory and CPU performance with lower latency, such as CPU-intensive tasks and applications needing high memory throughput.

From the friendly human:

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