DigitalOcean Regular (2 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 my world famous suite of benchmarking scripts. All instances were spun up with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and all resided in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Enough talk. Here's the data.
Overview
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Last Benchmarked | Tue, 12 May 2026 23:00:52 GMT | Sun, 10 May 2026 01:00:52 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 | $12.00 | €7.00 |
| RAM (GB) | 2 | 1 |
| CPU Cores | 1 | 1 |
| Storage (TB) | 50 | 25 |
| Storage Type | SSD | SSD |
| Transfer (TB) | 2 | 1 |
CPU
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | GenuineIntel | AuthenticAMD |
| Model Name | DO-Regular | AMD EPYC 9575F 64-Core Processor |
| Clock Speed (MHz) | 2,294.61 | 3,295.48 |
| CPU Cache Size (KB) | 4,096.00 | 512.00 |
| BogoMips | 4,589.21 | 6,590.95 |
| Events per Second | 408.72 | 5,808.89 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.98 | 0.16 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 2.44 | 0.17 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 30.57 | 0.91 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 4.1 | 0.19 |
Memory
Memory Read
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Operations per second | 1,633,276.41 | 8,147,464.61 |
| Mebibytes per second | 1,595.00 | 7,956.51 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 3.35 | 0.25 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
Memory Write
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Operations per second | 1,592,941.48 | 8,246,922.71 |
| Mebibytes per second | 1,555.61 | 8,053.64 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 5.53 | 0.24 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
File I/O
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Reads per Second | 1,584.78 | 5,159.90 |
| Writes per Second | 1,056.52 | 3,439.93 |
| Fsyncs per Second | 3,385.97 | 11,013.54 |
| Read Mebibytes per Second | 24.76 | 80.62 |
| Written Mebibytes per Second | 16.51 | 53.75 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.16 | 0.05 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 20.31 | 52.17 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0.51 | 0.18 |
Mutex
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 2,434.32 | 1,201.12 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 2,473.55 | 1,206.08 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 2,489.41 | 1,210.41 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 2,493.86 | 1,213.57 |
MySQL
MySQL Read-only
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 4,752.00 | 28,978.00 |
| Queries per second | 47,520.00 | 289,780.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 1.23 | 0.27 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 2.1 | 0.34 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 5.76 | 6.69 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 2.66 | 0.48 |
MySQL Write-only
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 1,930.00 | 10,035.00 |
| Queries per second | 19,300.00 | 100,350.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 2.65 | 0.47 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 5.18 | 1 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 56.83 | 30.82 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 7.98 | 1.44 |
MySQL Read/Write
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 1,306.00 | 6,060.00 |
| Queries per second | 13,060.00 | 60,600.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 4.6 | 0.99 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 7.65 | 1.65 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 28.54 | 39.94 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 10.09 | 2.48 |
MySQL INSERT
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 3,148.00 | 13,060.00 |
| Queries per second | 31,480.00 | 130,600.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 1.72 | 0.34 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 3.17 | 0.76 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 32.67 | 25.82 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 4.41 | 1.04 |
MySQL Bulk INSERT
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 669,209.00 | 3,521,146.00 |
| Queries per second | 6,692,090.00 | 35,211,460.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.02 | 0 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 772.1 | 160.29 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
MySQL SELECT
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 136,020.00 | 976,863.00 |
| Queries per second | 1,360,200.00 | 9,768,630.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.04 | 0.01 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.07 | 0.01 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 3.33 | 4.28 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0.11 | 0.01 |
MySQL SELECT (Random Points)
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 3,617.00 | 19,152.00 |
| Queries per second | 36,170.00 | 191,520.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.82 | 0.15 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 2.76 | 0.52 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 12.27 | 6.07 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 3.82 | 0.75 |
MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 3,087.00 | 19,009.00 |
| Queries per second | 30,870.00 | 190,090.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.67 | 0.14 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 3.23 | 0.53 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 8.52 | 5.22 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 5.18 | 0.87 |
MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 2,586.00 | 12,488.00 |
| Queries per second | 25,860.00 | 124,880.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 1.8 | 0.35 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 3.86 | 0.8 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 45.13 | 21.25 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 6.21 | 1.25 |
MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 3,094.00 | 13,276.00 |
| Queries per second | 30,940.00 | 132,760.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 1.83 | 0.36 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 3.23 | 0.75 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 35.75 | 19.77 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 4.65 | 1.04 |
MySQL DELETE
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 19,562.00 | 506,633.00 |
| Queries per second | 195,620.00 | 5,066,330.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.04 | 0.01 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.51 | 0.02 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 32.94 | 18.52 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 3.02 | 0.02 |
Redis
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| PING_INLINE per Second | 39,729.84 | 180,831.83 |
| PING_MBULK per Second | 42,176.30 | 192,307.70 |
| SET per Second | 40,833.00 | 181,818.17 |
| GET per Second | 34,590.11 | 189,035.92 |
| INCR per Second | 35,410.77 | 182,815.36 |
| LPUSH per Second | 39,184.95 | 185,185.17 |
| RPUSH per Second | 36,509.68 | 175,131.36 |
| LPOP per Second | 36,791.76 | 188,323.91 |
| RPOP per Second | 38,834.95 | 180,505.41 |
| SADD per Second | 35,727.05 | 187,617.27 |
| HSET per Second | 35,790.98 | 184,162.06 |
| SPOP per Second | 39,478.88 | 184,842.88 |
| ZADD per Second | 38,850.04 | 176,056.33 |
| ZPOPMIN per Second | 40,338.84 | 176,991.16 |
| LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second | 17,461.15 | 98,135.42 |
| LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second | 7,711.29 | 47,641.73 |
| LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second | 4,860.50 | 31,938.68 |
| LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second | 4,094.67 | 24,875.62 |
| MSET (10 keys) per Second | 32,041.01 | 163,934.42 |
Redis Average Latency (ms)
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| PING_INLINE | 0.83 | 0.18 |
| PING_MBULK | 0.78 | 0.17 |
| SET | 0.82 | 0.18 |
| GET | 0.94 | 0.17 |
| INCR | 0.93 | 0.18 |
| LPUSH | 0.85 | 0.18 |
| RPUSH | 0.91 | 0.19 |
| LPOP | 0.92 | 0.18 |
| RPOP | 0.87 | 0.19 |
| SADD | 0.92 | 0.18 |
| HSET | 0.93 | 0.18 |
| SPOP | 0.84 | 0.18 |
| ZADD | 0.86 | 0.19 |
| ZPOPMIN | 0.82 | 0.19 |
| LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) | 2.05 | 0.37 |
| LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) | 4.59 | 0.76 |
| LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) | 7.19 | 1.13 |
| LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) | 8.42 | 1.39 |
| MSET (10 keys) | 1.12 | 0.22 |
Conclusion
From the friendly robots:
Upon comparing the benchmark performance of the DigitalOcean "Regular (2 GB)" instance and the UpCloud "Balanced (1 GB)" instance, it's evident that UpCloud's instance excels in raw performance metrics, particularly in Redis operations where it achieves significantly higher requests per second (rps) and lower latencies across various commands. This is reflective of the higher clock speed and more advanced CPU architecture of the AMD EPYC 9575F processor used in UpCloud's instance. Conversely, DigitalOcean's instance, while slightly underperforming in these high-throughput scenarios, offers robust performance in CPU-bound and I/O-heavy tasks, evidenced by lower average latencies in CPU, file I/O, and memory operations. Ideal use cases for DigitalOcean’s instance would be scenarios requiring stable, less volatile performance under sustained workloads, while UpCloud’s instance would be preferable for applications demanding high concurrency and throughput, such as large-scale Redis caching or low-latency data processing tasks.
From the friendly human:
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