VPS Showdown VPS Showdown

DigitalOcean Regular (2 GB) vs. UpCloud Balanced (2 GB)

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My friend, I'm so glad you're here! Today I spun up fresh instances from DigitalOcean and UpCloud and ran my world famous suite of benchmarking scripts. Each instance was running Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 and were created in the New York area (or close to it). Enough talk. Here's the data.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Last Benchmarked Sat, 01 Aug 2026 05:03:47 GMT Sat, 01 Aug 2026 05:05:17 GMT
Linux Distro Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version 7.0.0-27-generic 7.0.0-27-generic
MySQL Version 8.4.10-0ubuntu0.26.04.1 8.4.10-0ubuntu0.26.04.1
Redis Version 8.0.5 8.0.5
Location New York, NY New York, NY
Monthly Price $12.00 €13.00
RAM (GB) 2 2
CPU Cores 1 1
Storage (TB) 50 50
Storage Type SSD SSD
Transfer (TB) 2 2

Head-to-head

Category winners from the latest benchmarks.

CategoryWinner
CPU (events/sec)UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Memory (read MiB/s)UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Disk I/O (MiB/s)UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
MySQL (read/write tps)UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Redis (GET/sec)UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Value (CPU events per $/mo)UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) takes 6 of 6 categories.

CPU

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Vendor GenuineIntel AuthenticAMD
Model Name DO-Regular AMD EPYC 9575F 64-Core Processor
Clock Speed (MHz) 2,294.61 3,295.42
CPU Cache Size (KB) 4,096.00 512.00
BogoMips 4,589.21 6,590.84
Events per Second 337.24 4,736.09
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.07 0.19
Average Latency (ms) 2.96 0.21
Maximum Latency (ms) 7.98 2.23
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.74 0.24

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Operations per second 2,158,838.24 7,122,400.62
Mebibytes per second 2,108.24 6,955.47
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 7.22 0.37
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Operations per second 3,098,478.11 7,139,007.40
Mebibytes per second 3,025.86 6,971.69
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.23 0.29
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Reads per Second 897.65 3,511.30
Writes per Second 598.43 2,340.87
Fsyncs per Second 1,924.36 7,490.87
Read Mebibytes per Second 14.03 54.86
Written Mebibytes per Second 9.35 36.58
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.29 0.07
Maximum Latency (ms) 30.6 29.46
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.9 0.26

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 2,798.91 1,305.60
Average Latency (ms) 2,816.88 1,313.28
Maximum Latency (ms) 2,827.29 1,319.54
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2,828.87 1,327.91

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 4,209.00 15,488.00
Queries per second 42,090.00 154,880.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.24 0.44
Average Latency (ms) 2.37 0.64
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.8 2.13
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.91 0.77

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 720.00 5,617.00
Queries per second 7,200.00 56,170.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.26 0.87
Average Latency (ms) 13.89 1.78
Maximum Latency (ms) 898.41 47.05
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 11.24 2.81

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 914.00 3,612.00
Queries per second 9,140.00 36,120.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 5.04 1.68
Average Latency (ms) 10.93 2.76
Maximum Latency (ms) 399.05 29.34
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 12.98 3.96

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 2,481.00 8,793.00
Queries per second 24,810.00 87,930.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.76 0.53
Average Latency (ms) 4.02 1.13
Maximum Latency (ms) 209.08 33.56
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 6.43 1.79

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 603,677.00 2,016,592.00
Queries per second 6,036,770.00 20,165,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.02 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 768.14 214.98
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 111,711.00 421,834.00
Queries per second 1,117,110.00 4,218,340.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.02
Average Latency (ms) 0.09 0.02
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.67 1.13
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.14 0.03

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 2,616.00 8,876.00
Queries per second 26,160.00 88,760.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.4 0.3
Average Latency (ms) 3.82 1.13
Maximum Latency (ms) 19.97 4.11
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5.18 1.55

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 2,567.00 14,529.00
Queries per second 25,670.00 145,290.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.01 0.2
Average Latency (ms) 3.89 0.69
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.69 2.02
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5.57 0.99

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 1,815.00 7,318.00
Queries per second 18,150.00 73,180.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.76 0.57
Average Latency (ms) 5.5 1.36
Maximum Latency (ms) 1034.92 38.29
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 6.67 2.14

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 3,210.00 8,495.00
Queries per second 32,100.00 84,950.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.61 0.57
Average Latency (ms) 3.11 1.18
Maximum Latency (ms) 42.13 20.17
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5.09 1.86

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Transactions per second 18,558.00 150,571.00
Queries per second 185,580.00 1,505,710.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.02
Average Latency (ms) 0.54 0.07
Maximum Latency (ms) 146.02 73.25
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.91 0.08

Redis

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 32,310.18 51,626.23
PING_MBULK per Second 31,645.57 51,203.28
SET per Second 29,222.68 51,786.64
GET per Second 28,760.43 52,356.02
INCR per Second 34,411.56 52,882.07
LPUSH per Second 31,705.77 53,390.28
RPUSH per Second 30,883.26 50,479.56
LPOP per Second 30,892.80 54,318.30
RPOP per Second 33,602.15 52,603.89
SADD per Second 32,520.32 51,679.59
HSET per Second 34,459.00 49,091.80
SPOP per Second 35,997.12 47,169.81
ZADD per Second 29,197.08 50,505.05
ZPOPMIN per Second 29,403.12 50,890.59
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 14,295.93 38,080.73
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 6,915.15 24,125.45
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 4,855.55 18,611.58
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 4,463.09 16,837.85
MSET (10 keys) per Second 27,631.94 49,578.58

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
PING_INLINE0.960.57
PING_MBULK0.970.57
SET1.060.59
GET1.080.57
INCR0.910.57
LPUSH0.980.57
RPUSH0.990.60
LPOP1.000.57
RPOP0.940.59
SADD0.950.58
HSET0.910.62
SPOP0.860.63
ZADD1.070.61
ZPOPMIN1.050.58
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)2.230.83
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)4.291.35
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)5.911.72
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)6.471.90
MSET (10 keys)1.370.73

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The UpCloud Balanced (2 GB) instance clearly outperforms the DigitalOcean Regular (2 GB) in the benchmarks provided. With Redis benchmarks showing significantly higher requests per second (e.g., UpCloud achieves 52,383.45 RPS for XADD compared to DigitalOcean's 29,222.68 RPS for SET), and MySQL benchmarks demonstrating superior transaction per second rates (e.g., UpCloud reaches 198,300.13 TPS for bulk inserts while DigitalOcean lags at 58,761.1 TPs), UpCloud excels in both CPU performance and overall throughput. This makes UpCloud a better choice for CPU-intensive and high-transaction workloads, whereas DigitalOcean might be more suited for budget-conscious applications with less demanding performance requirements.

From the friendly human:

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Providers & pricing

DigitalOcean overview UpCloud overviewDigitalOcean Regular (2 GB) pricing UpCloud Balanced (2 GB) pricing

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