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

vs.

Welcome to another round of the VPS Showdown. Today I've spun up brand new instance from DigitalOcean and UpCloud to run some benchmarks on. All instances were spun up with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and were created in the New York area (or close to it). Let's get into the numbers.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Last Benchmarked Sat, 10 Jan 2026 13:00:51 GMT Sat, 10 Jan 2026 17:00:52 GMT
Linux Distro Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version 6.8.0-71-generic 6.8.0-87-generic
MySQL Version 8.0.44-0ubuntu0.24.04.2 8.0.44-0ubuntu0.24.04.2
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 661.76 1,601.08
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.91 0.6
Average Latency (ms) 1.51 0.62
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.76 1.45
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.86 0.65

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Operations per second 4,638,547.27 5,159,448.90
Mebibytes per second 4,529.83 5,038.52
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.25 1.07
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Operations per second 4,555,154.10 5,232,459.44
Mebibytes per second 4,448.39 5,109.82
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.1 0.21
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Reads per Second 2,978.90 2,136.79
Writes per Second 1,985.94 1,424.52
Fsyncs per Second 6,355.29 4,560.37
Read Mebibytes per Second 46.55 33.39
Written Mebibytes per Second 31.03 22.26
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.09 0.12
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.01 97.79
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.22 0.37

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 2,038.41 1,728.50
Average Latency (ms) 2,049.35 1,749.05
Maximum Latency (ms) 2,057.81 1,765.60
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2,045.74 1,771.29

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second 7,289.00 6,928.00
Queries per second 72,890.00 69,280.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.14 1.25
Average Latency (ms) 1.37 1.44
Maximum Latency (ms) 12.44 10.02
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.03 1.61

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second 4,600.00 3,856.00
Queries per second 46,000.00 38,560.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.08 1.71
Average Latency (ms) 2.17 2.59
Maximum Latency (ms) 11.17 28.87
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.19 3.49

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second 1,877.00 2,158.00
Queries per second 18,770.00 21,580.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.89 3.4
Average Latency (ms) 5.32 4.63
Maximum Latency (ms) 33.91 39.11
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 6.79 5.99

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second 9,598.00 5,881.00
Queries per second 95,980.00 58,810.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.51 1.03
Average Latency (ms) 1.04 1.7
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.03 29.11
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.5 2.14

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second 1,026,342.00 1,171,967.00
Queries per second 10,263,420.00 11,719,670.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 534.47 457.43
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second 197,925.00 157,828.00
Queries per second 1,979,250.00 1,578,280.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.05 0.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.38 2.79
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.08 0.09

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second 5,642.00 7,045.00
Queries per second 56,420.00 70,450.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.58 0.46
Average Latency (ms) 1.77 1.42
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.6 9.59
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.91 1.96

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second 6,157.00 6,991.00
Queries per second 61,570.00 69,910.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.49 0.54
Average Latency (ms) 1.62 1.43
Maximum Latency (ms) 7.52 95.72
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.91 1.86

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second 7,852.00 5,004.00
Queries per second 78,520.00 50,040.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.51 1.05
Average Latency (ms) 1.27 2
Maximum Latency (ms) 12.99 87.03
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.11 2.81

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second 8,891.00 5,694.00
Queries per second 88,910.00 56,940.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.53 1.14
Average Latency (ms) 1.12 1.76
Maximum Latency (ms) 15.91 38.97
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.61 2.22

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second 82,028.00 43,385.00
Queries per second 820,280.00 433,850.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.12 0.23
Maximum Latency (ms) 25.41 22.52
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.35 1.7

Redis

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 53,078.56 42,194.09
PING_MBULK per Second 43,196.54 40,916.53
SET per Second 42,900.04 41,614.64
GET per Second 43,440.48 42,426.81
INCR per Second 41,169.21 42,105.26
LPUSH per Second 48,123.20 41,718.81
RPUSH per Second 51,098.62 41,459.37
LPOP per Second 52,110.47 41,425.02
RPOP per Second 44,111.16 41,736.23
SADD per Second 47,236.65 42,140.75
HSET per Second 50,890.59 41,220.11
SPOP per Second 45,766.59 41,893.59
ZADD per Second 52,083.34 40,160.64
ZPOPMIN per Second 46,926.32 41,631.97
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 25,886.62 27,151.78
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 13,119.92 14,176.35
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 9,060.43 10,114.29
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 6,810.60 9,054.69
MSET (10 keys) per Second 46,189.38 37,678.97

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
PING_INLINE0.610.81
PING_MBULK0.760.83
SET0.780.82
GET0.770.81
INCR0.810.81
LPUSH0.700.82
RPUSH0.650.83
LPOP0.640.83
RPOP0.760.83
SADD0.700.82
HSET0.650.83
SPOP0.720.81
ZADD0.630.85
ZPOPMIN0.700.82
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)1.371.29
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)2.772.53
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)3.963.54
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)5.273.98
MSET (10 keys)0.770.93

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

After analyzing the benchmark results for the DigitalOcean and UpCloud instances, both showing strong performance, DigitalOcean's "Regular (1 GB)" instance outperforms in Redis operations, delivering higher requests per second and generally lower latencies across various commands, suggesting it's better for workloads heavily reliant on Redis. UpCloud's "Balanced (1 GB)" instance, while slightly behind in Redis benchmarks, excels in CPU operations with higher events per second and lower average latencies, indicating it's a better choice for CPU-intensive tasks. Additionally, UpCloud offers marginally better throughput in file I/O operations, making it a slightly superior option for I/O-heavy workloads. Therefore, choose DigitalOcean for Redis-driven applications and UpCloud for CPU-intensive or I/O-demanding applications.

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.

You can also support me directly by buying me a coffee.