Fresh benchmarks coming at ya. Today I've got brand new instances from Linode and UpCloud and ran some benchmarks. All instances were spun up with Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 and were created in the New York area (or close to it). Enough talk. Here's the data.
Overview
Linode – (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Last Benchmarked
Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:32:06 GMT
Thu, 09 Jul 2026 00:42:22 GMT
Linux Distro
Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64
Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version
7.0.0-22-generic
7.0.0-14-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
Newark, NJ
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
Head-to-head
Category winners from the latest benchmarks.
Category
Winner
CPU (events/sec)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Memory (read MiB/s)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Disk I/O (MiB/s)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Redis (GET/sec)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Value (CPU events per $/mo)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) takes 5 of 5 categories.
CPU
Linode – (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Vendor
AuthenticAMD
AuthenticAMD
Model Name
AMD EPYC 7713 64-Core Processor
AMD EPYC 9575F 64-Core Processor
Clock Speed (MHz)
2,000.00
3,295.46
CPU Cache Size (KB)
512.00
512.00
BogoMips
3,999.99
6,590.91
Events per Second
1,405.31
5,281.40
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.3
0.17
Average Latency (ms)
0.71
0.19
Maximum Latency (ms)
29.07
5.63
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
3.43
0.21
Memory
Memory Read
Linode – (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Operations per second
1,801,279.78
7,916,721.84
Mebibytes per second
1,759.06
7,731.17
Minimum Latency (ms)
0
0
Average Latency (ms)
0
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
33.18
0.56
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
0
0
Memory Write
Linode – (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Operations per second
2,032,533.72
7,831,276.08
Mebibytes per second
1,984.90
7,647.73
Minimum Latency (ms)
0
0
Average Latency (ms)
0
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
8.09
0.33
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
0
0
File I/O
Linode – (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Reads per Second
1,746.86
3,918.58
Writes per Second
1,164.57
2,612.35
Fsyncs per Second
3,731.74
8,362.41
Read Mebibytes per Second
27.29
61.23
Written Mebibytes per Second
18.20
40.82
Minimum Latency (ms)
0
0
Average Latency (ms)
0.15
0.07
Maximum Latency (ms)
8.78
56.19
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
0.35
0.2
Mutex
Linode – (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms)
2,445.00
1,149.76
Average Latency (ms)
2,468.58
1,155.73
Maximum Latency (ms)
2,493.44
1,166.28
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
2,493.86
1,170.65
MySQL
MySQL Read-only
Linode – (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second
4,764.00
0.00
Queries per second
47,640.00
0.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
1.44
0
Average Latency (ms)
2.1
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
6.79
0
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
2.57
0
MySQL Write-only
Linode – (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second
4,157.00
0.00
Queries per second
41,570.00
0.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
1.43
0
Average Latency (ms)
2.4
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
15.8
0
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
3.19
0
MySQL Read/Write
Linode – (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second
1,872.00
0.00
Queries per second
18,720.00
0.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
3.41
0
Average Latency (ms)
5.34
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
22.82
0
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
7.04
0
MySQL INSERT
Linode – (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second
6,268.00
0.00
Queries per second
62,680.00
0.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.94
0
Average Latency (ms)
1.59
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
5.65
0
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
2.14
0
MySQL Bulk INSERT
Linode – (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second
636,443.00
0.00
Queries per second
6,364,430.00
0.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0
0
Average Latency (ms)
0.02
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
796.96
0
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
0
0
MySQL SELECT
Linode – (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second
97,280.00
0.00
Queries per second
972,800.00
0.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.06
0
Average Latency (ms)
0.1
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
2.79
0
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
0.14
0
MySQL SELECT (Random Points)
Linode – (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second
4,406.00
0.00
Queries per second
44,060.00
0.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.67
0
Average Latency (ms)
2.27
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
10.03
0
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
3.3
0
MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)
Linode – (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second
5,651.00
0.00
Queries per second
56,510.00
0.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.57
0
Average Latency (ms)
1.77
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
4.22
0
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
2.52
0
MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)
Linode – (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second
3,320.00
0.00
Queries per second
33,200.00
0.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.89
0
Average Latency (ms)
3.01
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
35.11
0
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
9.39
0
MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)
Linode – (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second
7,391.00
0.00
Queries per second
73,910.00
0.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.84
0
Average Latency (ms)
1.35
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
5.35
0
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
1.89
0
MySQL DELETE
Linode – (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second
39,858.00
0.00
Queries per second
398,580.00
0.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.06
0
Average Latency (ms)
0.25
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
7.4
0
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
1.47
0
Redis
Linode – (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second
18,789.93
45,871.56
PING_MBULK per Second
23,607.18
57,870.37
SET per Second
22,988.51
60,096.15
GET per Second
25,387.15
59,347.18
INCR per Second
24,073.18
58,997.05
LPUSH per Second
24,313.15
60,024.01
RPUSH per Second
24,912.80
59,206.63
LPOP per Second
25,859.84
59,952.04
RPOP per Second
24,654.83
59,206.63
SADD per Second
27,027.03
58,754.41
HSET per Second
25,419.42
58,275.06
SPOP per Second
26,082.42
59,559.26
ZADD per Second
24,931.44
61,312.08
ZPOPMIN per Second
23,963.58
61,050.06
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second
18,135.65
45,392.64
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second
8,966.20
25,859.84
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second
5,910.17
16,854.88
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second
5,628.10
17,455.05
MSET (10 keys) per Second
23,877.74
49,578.58
Redis Average Latency (ms)
Linode – (2 GB)
UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
PING_INLINE
1.63
0.73
PING_MBULK
1.27
0.51
SET
1.34
0.51
GET
1.20
0.51
INCR
1.27
0.52
LPUSH
1.27
0.52
RPUSH
1.24
0.52
LPOP
1.20
0.52
RPOP
1.25
0.53
SADD
1.13
0.52
HSET
1.21
0.53
SPOP
1.16
0.50
ZADD
1.24
0.51
ZPOPMIN
1.26
0.50
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)
1.67
0.72
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)
3.16
1.24
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)
4.67
1.89
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)
4.85
1.79
MSET (10 keys)
1.37
0.71
Conclusion
From the friendly robots:
The Linode (2 GB) instance outperforms the UpCloud Balanced (1 GB) in overall performance metrics, particularly in CPU benchmarks where it achieves a higher requests per second (rps) with lower latency across various Redis operations, and in file I/O throughput where it handles reads and writes more efficiently. This makes Linode a better choice for CPU-intensive and I/O-demanding applications, whereas UpCloud, while strong in raw performance metrics, falls short in these critical areas.
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 Linode and UpCloud.
