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

Fresh benchmarks coming at ya. Today I've spun up brand new instance from DigitalOcean and UpCloud and ran some benchmarks. Each instance was spun up with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and were created in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Enough talk. Here's the data.

Overview

	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Last Benchmarked	Wed, 21 May 2025 09:00:46 GMT	Wed, 21 May 2025 09:00:29 GMT
Linux Distro	Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64	Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version	6.8.0-31-generic	6.8.0-51-generic
MySQL Version	8.0.42-0ubuntu0.24.04.1	8.0.42-0ubuntu0.24.04.1
Redis Version	7.0.15	7.0.15
Location	New York, NY	New York, NY
Monthly Price	€7.00	$6.00
RAM (GB)	1	1
CPU Cores	1	1
Storage (TB)	25	25
Storage Type	SSD	SSD
Transfer (TB)	1	1

CPU

	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Vendor	AuthenticAMD	GenuineIntel
Model Name	AMD EPYC 7542 32-Core Processor	DO-Regular
Clock Speed (MHz)	2,894.56	2,494.14
CPU Cache Size (KB)	512.00	4,096.00
BogoMips	5,789.12	4,988.28
Events per Second	1,516.75	895.42
Minimum Latency (ms)	0.6	0.91
Average Latency (ms)	0.66	1.11
Maximum Latency (ms)	18.45	6.05
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	0.72	1.32

Memory Read

	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Operations per second	5,125,857.86	4,140,634.25
Mebibytes per second	5,005.72	4,043.59
Minimum Latency (ms)	0	0
Average Latency (ms)	0	0
Maximum Latency (ms)	0.38	2.47
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	0	0

Memory Write

	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Operations per second	5,117,919.14	4,129,709.52
Mebibytes per second	4,997.97	4,032.92
Minimum Latency (ms)	0	0
Average Latency (ms)	0	0
Maximum Latency (ms)	0.32	2.02
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	0	0

File I/O

	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Reads per Second	2,126.78	2,626.29
Writes per Second	1,417.85	1,750.86
Fsyncs per Second	4,537.52	5,614.03
Read Mebibytes per Second	33.23	41.04
Written Mebibytes per Second	22.15	27.36
Minimum Latency (ms)	0	0
Average Latency (ms)	0.12	0.1
Maximum Latency (ms)	52.76	9.31
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	0.37	0.27

Mutex

	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms)	1,745.06	2,426.81
Average Latency (ms)	1,758.67	2,438.67
Maximum Latency (ms)	1,766.79	2,447.80
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	1,771.29	2,449.36

MySQL Read-only

	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second	5,623.00	4,029.00
Queries per second	56,230.00	40,290.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	1.28	1.21
Average Latency (ms)	1.78	2.48
Maximum Latency (ms)	43.01	12.12
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	2.43	3.89

MySQL Write-only

	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second	2,858.00	2,367.00
Queries per second	28,580.00	23,670.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	1.78	1.59
Average Latency (ms)	3.5	4.22
Maximum Latency (ms)	28.79	35.94
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	5.99	7.7

MySQL Read/Write

	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second	1,429.00	1,310.00
Queries per second	14,290.00	13,100.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	3.58	3.36
Average Latency (ms)	6.99	7.63
Maximum Latency (ms)	108.75	35.61
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	11.45	13.22

MySQL INSERT

	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second	4,656.00	5,792.00
Queries per second	46,560.00	57,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	1	0.53
Average Latency (ms)	2.14	1.72
Maximum Latency (ms)	39.06	27.96
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	3.13	3.3

MySQL Bulk INSERT

	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second	1,084,592.00	931,337.00
Queries per second	10,845,920.00	9,313,370.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	0	0
Average Latency (ms)	0.01	0.01
Maximum Latency (ms)	517.27	610.39
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	0	0

MySQL SELECT

	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second	107,819.00	103,878.00
Queries per second	1,078,190.00	1,038,780.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	0.05	0.04
Average Latency (ms)	0.09	0.1
Maximum Latency (ms)	27.4	3.84
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	0.23	0.24

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second	141.00	108.00
Queries per second	1,410.00	1,080.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	27.86	47.93
Average Latency (ms)	71.23	92.79
Maximum Latency (ms)	305.49	136.04
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	137.35	121.08

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second	5,000.00	3,621.00
Queries per second	50,000.00	36,210.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	0.37	0.9
Average Latency (ms)	2	2.76
Maximum Latency (ms)	18.6	8.17
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	2.57	4.57

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second	2,931.00	3,493.00
Queries per second	29,310.00	34,930.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	1.37	0.91
Average Latency (ms)	3.41	2.86
Maximum Latency (ms)	1996.38	21.6
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	4.49	5.67

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second	3,825.00	6,514.00
Queries per second	38,250.00	65,140.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	1.31	0.52
Average Latency (ms)	2.61	1.53
Maximum Latency (ms)	2036.89	27.57
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	3.07	2.66

MySQL DELETE

	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second	5,421.00	6,752.00
Queries per second	54,210.00	67,520.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	0.05	0.05
Average Latency (ms)	1.84	1.48
Maximum Latency (ms)	73.64	39.85
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	3.19	3.13

Redis

	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second	30,120.48	47,058.82
PING_MBULK per Second	42,844.90	53,850.30
SET per Second	42,194.09	46,948.36
GET per Second	41,425.02	50,994.39
INCR per Second	42,158.52	50,530.57
LPUSH per Second	33,534.54	43,327.55
RPUSH per Second	41,981.53	39,401.10
LPOP per Second	36,062.03	46,403.71
RPOP per Second	41,305.25	45,392.64
SADD per Second	41,597.34	38,850.04
HSET per Second	42,771.60	48,851.98
SPOP per Second	42,716.79	48,875.86
ZADD per Second	41,407.87	40,816.32
ZPOPMIN per Second	42,808.22	42,426.81
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second	27,005.13	24,283.63
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second	14,725.37	9,802.00
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second	10,192.64	6,815.70
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second	8,893.63	6,620.76
MSET (10 keys) per Second	39,138.94	39,447.73

Redis Average Latency (ms)

	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
PING_INLINE	0.83	0.71
PING_MBULK	0.80	0.60
SET	0.82	0.72
GET	0.82	0.65
INCR	0.81	0.65
LPUSH	1.00	0.77
RPUSH	0.81	0.85
LPOP	0.97	0.73
RPOP	0.83	0.73
SADD	0.83	0.85
HSET	0.81	0.68
SPOP	0.80	0.67
ZADD	0.83	0.82
ZPOPMIN	0.80	0.78
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)	1.31	1.46
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)	2.48	3.72
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)	3.53	5.30
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)	4.05	5.45
MSET (10 keys)	0.90	0.89

Conclusion

After analyzing the benchmark results, the DigitalOcean instance shows slightly higher performance in Redis operations, particularly in GET and INCR commands, with more consistent latency across various operations. The UpCloud instance, however, demonstrates superior CPU performance in terms of events per second and lower average latency, along with better memory read and write operations. The UpCloud instance also has a more substantial cache size, which could benefit memory-intensive tasks. For CPU-bound and memory-intensive workloads, the UpCloud instance might be preferable, while DigitalOcean's instance is better suited for Redis-heavy applications requiring high read and write throughput.

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