DigitalOcean Regular (1 GB) vs. UpCloud Balanced (1 GB)

Fresh benchmarks coming at ya. Today I've spun up brand new instance from DigitalOcean and UpCloud and ran some benchmarks. Each instance was spun up with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and were created in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Enough talk. Here's the data.

Overview

	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Last Benchmarked	Wed, 21 May 2025 09:00:29 GMT	Wed, 21 May 2025 09:00:46 GMT
Linux Distro	Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64	Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version	6.8.0-51-generic	6.8.0-31-generic
MySQL Version	8.0.42-0ubuntu0.24.04.1	8.0.42-0ubuntu0.24.04.1
Redis Version	7.0.15	7.0.15
Location	New York, NY	New York, NY
Monthly Price	$6.00	€7.00
RAM (GB)	1	1
CPU Cores	1	1
Storage (TB)	25	25
Storage Type	SSD	SSD
Transfer (TB)	1	1

CPU

	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Vendor	GenuineIntel	AuthenticAMD
Model Name	DO-Regular	AMD EPYC 7542 32-Core Processor
Clock Speed (MHz)	2,494.14	2,894.56
CPU Cache Size (KB)	4,096.00	512.00
BogoMips	4,988.28	5,789.12
Events per Second	895.42	1,516.75
Minimum Latency (ms)	0.91	0.6
Average Latency (ms)	1.11	0.66
Maximum Latency (ms)	6.05	18.45
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	1.32	0.72

Memory Read

	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Operations per second	4,140,634.25	5,125,857.86
Mebibytes per second	4,043.59	5,005.72
Minimum Latency (ms)	0	0
Average Latency (ms)	0	0
Maximum Latency (ms)	2.47	0.38
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	0	0

Memory Write

	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Operations per second	4,129,709.52	5,117,919.14
Mebibytes per second	4,032.92	4,997.97
Minimum Latency (ms)	0	0
Average Latency (ms)	0	0
Maximum Latency (ms)	2.02	0.32
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	0	0

File I/O

	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Reads per Second	2,626.29	2,126.78
Writes per Second	1,750.86	1,417.85
Fsyncs per Second	5,614.03	4,537.52
Read Mebibytes per Second	41.04	33.23
Written Mebibytes per Second	27.36	22.15
Minimum Latency (ms)	0	0
Average Latency (ms)	0.1	0.12
Maximum Latency (ms)	9.31	52.76
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	0.27	0.37

Mutex

	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms)	2,426.81	1,745.06
Average Latency (ms)	2,438.67	1,758.67
Maximum Latency (ms)	2,447.80	1,766.79
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	2,449.36	1,771.29

MySQL Read-only

	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second	4,029.00	5,623.00
Queries per second	40,290.00	56,230.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	1.21	1.28
Average Latency (ms)	2.48	1.78
Maximum Latency (ms)	12.12	43.01
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	3.89	2.43

MySQL Write-only

	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second	2,367.00	2,858.00
Queries per second	23,670.00	28,580.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	1.59	1.78
Average Latency (ms)	4.22	3.5
Maximum Latency (ms)	35.94	28.79
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	7.7	5.99

MySQL Read/Write

	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second	1,310.00	1,429.00
Queries per second	13,100.00	14,290.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	3.36	3.58
Average Latency (ms)	7.63	6.99
Maximum Latency (ms)	35.61	108.75
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	13.22	11.45

MySQL INSERT

	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second	5,792.00	4,656.00
Queries per second	57,920.00	46,560.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	0.53	1
Average Latency (ms)	1.72	2.14
Maximum Latency (ms)	27.96	39.06
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	3.3	3.13

MySQL Bulk INSERT

	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second	931,337.00	1,084,592.00
Queries per second	9,313,370.00	10,845,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	0	0
Average Latency (ms)	0.01	0.01
Maximum Latency (ms)	610.39	517.27
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	0	0

MySQL SELECT

	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second	103,878.00	107,819.00
Queries per second	1,038,780.00	1,078,190.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	0.04	0.05
Average Latency (ms)	0.1	0.09
Maximum Latency (ms)	3.84	27.4
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	0.24	0.23

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second	108.00	141.00
Queries per second	1,080.00	1,410.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	47.93	27.86
Average Latency (ms)	92.79	71.23
Maximum Latency (ms)	136.04	305.49
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	121.08	137.35

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second	3,621.00	5,000.00
Queries per second	36,210.00	50,000.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	0.9	0.37
Average Latency (ms)	2.76	2
Maximum Latency (ms)	8.17	18.6
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	4.57	2.57

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second	3,493.00	2,931.00
Queries per second	34,930.00	29,310.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	0.91	1.37
Average Latency (ms)	2.86	3.41
Maximum Latency (ms)	21.6	1996.38
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	5.67	4.49

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second	6,514.00	3,825.00
Queries per second	65,140.00	38,250.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	0.52	1.31
Average Latency (ms)	1.53	2.61
Maximum Latency (ms)	27.57	2036.89
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	2.66	3.07

MySQL DELETE

	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second	6,752.00	5,421.00
Queries per second	67,520.00	54,210.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	0.05	0.05
Average Latency (ms)	1.48	1.84
Maximum Latency (ms)	39.85	73.64
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	3.13	3.19

Redis

	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second	47,058.82	30,120.48
PING_MBULK per Second	53,850.30	42,844.90
SET per Second	46,948.36	42,194.09
GET per Second	50,994.39	41,425.02
INCR per Second	50,530.57	42,158.52
LPUSH per Second	43,327.55	33,534.54
RPUSH per Second	39,401.10	41,981.53
LPOP per Second	46,403.71	36,062.03
RPOP per Second	45,392.64	41,305.25
SADD per Second	38,850.04	41,597.34
HSET per Second	48,851.98	42,771.60
SPOP per Second	48,875.86	42,716.79
ZADD per Second	40,816.32	41,407.87
ZPOPMIN per Second	42,426.81	42,808.22
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second	24,283.63	27,005.13
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second	9,802.00	14,725.37
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second	6,815.70	10,192.64
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second	6,620.76	8,893.63
MSET (10 keys) per Second	39,447.73	39,138.94

Redis Average Latency (ms)

	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
PING_INLINE	0.71	0.83
PING_MBULK	0.60	0.80
SET	0.72	0.82
GET	0.65	0.82
INCR	0.65	0.81
LPUSH	0.77	1.00
RPUSH	0.85	0.81
LPOP	0.73	0.97
RPOP	0.73	0.83
SADD	0.85	0.83
HSET	0.68	0.81
SPOP	0.67	0.80
ZADD	0.82	0.83
ZPOPMIN	0.78	0.80
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)	1.46	1.31
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)	3.72	2.48
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)	5.30	3.53
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)	5.45	4.05
MSET (10 keys)	0.89	0.90

Conclusion

After analyzing the benchmark results, the DigitalOcean instance shows slightly higher performance in Redis operations, particularly in GET and INCR commands, with more consistent latency across various operations. The UpCloud instance, however, demonstrates superior CPU performance in terms of events per second and lower average latency, along with better memory read and write operations. The UpCloud instance also has a more substantial cache size, which could benefit memory-intensive tasks. For CPU-bound and memory-intensive workloads, the UpCloud instance might be preferable, while DigitalOcean's instance is better suited for Redis-heavy applications requiring high read and write throughput.

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