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

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My friend, I'm so glad you're here! Today I've spun up some 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. Enough talk. Here's the data.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Last Benchmarked Mon, 08 Jun 2026 21:00:52 GMT Wed, 10 Jun 2026 03:00:58 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 8.0.46-0ubuntu0.24.04.2 8.0.46-0ubuntu0.24.04.2
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 9575F 64-Core Processor
Clock Speed (MHz) 2,294.61 3,295.46
CPU Cache Size (KB) 4,096.00 512.00
BogoMips 4,589.21 6,590.91
Events per Second 426.06 5,705.40
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.97 0.16
Average Latency (ms) 2.34 0.18
Maximum Latency (ms) 11.13 1.27
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.03 0.19

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Operations per second 3,186,627.49 8,056,617.47
Mebibytes per second 3,111.94 7,867.79
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.13 0.28
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Operations per second 3,529,570.35 7,635,465.92
Mebibytes per second 3,446.85 7,456.51
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.73 0.72
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Reads per Second 531.03 4,880.21
Writes per Second 354.02 3,253.44
Fsyncs per Second 1,137.44 10,411.32
Read Mebibytes per Second 8.30 76.25
Written Mebibytes per Second 5.53 50.83
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.49 0.05
Maximum Latency (ms) 34.65 25.28
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.14 0.19

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 2,179.34 1,094.52
Average Latency (ms) 2,192.91 1,098.99
Maximum Latency (ms) 2,199.32 1,105.13
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2,198.52 1,109.09

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second 4,443.00 27,863.00
Queries per second 44,430.00 278,630.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.27 0.28
Average Latency (ms) 2.25 0.36
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.86 4.23
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.76 0.5

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second 732.00 8,234.00
Queries per second 7,320.00 82,340.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 5.99 0.51
Average Latency (ms) 13.67 1.21
Maximum Latency (ms) 43.33 109.78
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 22.69 1.7

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second 401.00 5,658.00
Queries per second 4,010.00 56,580.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 12.07 1.02
Average Latency (ms) 24.97 1.77
Maximum Latency (ms) 157.04 29.92
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 44.17 2.43

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second 867.00 10,677.00
Queries per second 8,670.00 106,770.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 4.9 0.4
Average Latency (ms) 11.54 0.93
Maximum Latency (ms) 78.4 51.91
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 21.89 1.32

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second 701,975.00 3,065,346.00
Queries per second 7,019,750.00 30,653,460.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 927.69 175.55
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second 136,327.00 904,699.00
Queries per second 1,363,270.00 9,046,990.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.01
Average Latency (ms) 0.07 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.26 1.15
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.11 0.02

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second 3,493.00 18,275.00
Queries per second 34,930.00 182,750.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.97 0.16
Average Latency (ms) 2.86 0.55
Maximum Latency (ms) 30.03 4.14
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.96 0.81

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second 2,982.00 18,836.00
Queries per second 29,820.00 188,360.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.73 0.15
Average Latency (ms) 3.35 0.53
Maximum Latency (ms) 7.26 1.6
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5 0.77

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second 471.00 9,429.00
Queries per second 4,710.00 94,290.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 7.73 0.41
Average Latency (ms) 21.3 1.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 316.49 70.38
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 42.61 1.52

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second 759.00 10,777.00
Queries per second 7,590.00 107,770.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 5.39 0.4
Average Latency (ms) 13.17 0.93
Maximum Latency (ms) 186.75 41.92
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 24.38 1.37

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second 3,484.00 318,714.00
Queries per second 34,840.00 3,187,140.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.01
Average Latency (ms) 2.87 0.03
Maximum Latency (ms) 53.15 74.81
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 14.46 0.03

Redis

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 37,936.27 174,216.03
PING_MBULK per Second 29,239.77 171,232.88
SET per Second 31,142.95 170,357.75
GET per Second 37,064.49 179,856.11
INCR per Second 36,886.76 180,180.17
LPUSH per Second 36,403.35 168,634.06
RPUSH per Second 36,310.82 174,216.03
LPOP per Second 35,087.72 171,526.58
RPOP per Second 36,873.16 170,940.17
SADD per Second 37,425.15 166,666.66
HSET per Second 35,448.42 166,666.66
SPOP per Second 31,867.43 168,634.06
ZADD per Second 33,579.59 171,232.88
ZPOPMIN per Second 36,886.76 175,746.92
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 15,003.75 89,206.06
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 6,284.57 42,444.82
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 4,604.48 25,866.53
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 3,898.18 21,070.38
MSET (10 keys) per Second 24,789.29 145,137.88

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
PING_INLINE0.880.19
PING_MBULK1.120.19
SET1.060.20
GET0.900.18
INCR0.900.19
LPUSH0.920.20
RPUSH0.920.19
LPOP0.960.20
RPOP0.920.20
SADD0.890.20
HSET0.940.20
SPOP1.020.20
ZADD0.990.20
ZPOPMIN0.890.19
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)2.400.40
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)5.550.83
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)7.481.38
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)8.751.71
MSET (10 keys)1.510.25

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The UpCloud Balanced (1 GB) instance outperforms the DigitalOcean Regular (1 GB) in all benchmark categories, especially in CPU and Redis operations, likely due to the higher clock speed and more substantial cache size of the AMD EPYC 9575F processor. The UpCloud instance shows significantly higher rates of requests per second and lower latencies across all Redis commands, more efficient file I/O operations, and better memory performance. However, DigitalOcean’s instance still provides respectable benchmarks, especially in lower-level operations such as file and memory latencies and throughputs. Ideal use cases for the UpCloud instance would be applications requiring high CPU performance, such as large-scale caching with Redis or heavy database transactions, while the DigitalOcean instance might be better suited for more modest workloads or scenarios where cost is a primary concern.

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.

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