UpCloud Balanced (1 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Regular (1 GB)
Welcome to another round of the VPS Showdown. Today I've spun up brand new instance from DigitalOcean and UpCloud and ran some benchmarks. All instances were running Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and were created in the New York area (or close to it). Without further ado, here's the results.
Overview
| UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Last Benchmarked | Fri, 22 May 2026 11:00:52 GMT | Sun, 24 May 2026 06:00:51 GMT |
| Linux Distro | Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 | Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 |
| Kernel Version | 6.8.0-111-generic | 6.8.0-71-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 | €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 9575F 64-Core Processor | DO-Regular |
| Clock Speed (MHz) | 3,295.45 | 2,494.17 |
| CPU Cache Size (KB) | 512.00 | 4,096.00 |
| BogoMips | 6,590.90 | 4,988.33 |
| Events per Second | 5,248.20 | 544.64 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.18 | 0.91 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.19 | 1.83 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 1.79 | 6.05 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0.2 | 3.3 |
Memory
Memory Read
| UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Operations per second | 6,801,282.43 | 3,884,147.58 |
| Mebibytes per second | 6,641.88 | 3,793.11 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 2.29 | 4.21 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
Memory Write
| UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Operations per second | 5,773,502.12 | 3,855,342.89 |
| Mebibytes per second | 5,638.19 | 3,764.98 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 3.02 | 4.09 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
File I/O
| UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Reads per Second | 3,347.40 | 1,941.53 |
| Writes per Second | 2,231.60 | 1,294.36 |
| Fsyncs per Second | 7,151.99 | 4,148.23 |
| Read Mebibytes per Second | 52.30 | 30.34 |
| Written Mebibytes per Second | 34.87 | 20.22 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.08 | 0.13 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 45.95 | 14.04 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0.25 | 0.37 |
Mutex
| UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 1,448.88 | 2,442.65 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 1,453.66 | 2,474.33 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 1,458.86 | 2,494.37 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 1,453.01 | 2,493.86 |
MySQL
MySQL Read-only
| UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 186.00 | 5,075.00 |
| Queries per second | 1,860.00 | 50,750.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.33 | 1.28 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 54.83 | 1.97 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 1519.77 | 7.01 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 320.17 | 2.52 |
MySQL Write-only
| UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 7.00 | 3,624.00 |
| Queries per second | 70.00 | 36,240.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 1299.84 | 1.32 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 1584.29 | 2.75 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 1904.57 | 14.77 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 1903.57 | 4.25 |
MySQL Read/Write
| UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 1.00 | 1,703.00 |
| Queries per second | 10.00 | 17,030.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 16296.58 | 3.52 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 16296.58 | 5.86 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 16296.58 | 19.13 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 16224.31 | 7.98 |
MySQL INSERT
| UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 92.00 | 6,947.00 |
| Queries per second | 920.00 | 69,470.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 1.47 | 0.67 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 110.5 | 1.43 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 255.29 | 10.58 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 204.11 | 2.11 |
MySQL Bulk INSERT
| UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 2,307,842.00 | 898,571.00 |
| Queries per second | 23,078,420.00 | 8,985,710.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0 | 0.01 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 293.41 | 604.32 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
MySQL SELECT
| UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 613,969.00 | 134,023.00 |
| Queries per second | 6,139,690.00 | 1,340,230.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.01 | 0.04 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.02 | 0.07 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 211.08 | 1.96 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0.02 | 0.12 |
MySQL SELECT (Random Points)
| UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 36.00 | 3,981.00 |
| Queries per second | 360.00 | 39,810.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 132 | 0.66 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 280.61 | 2.51 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 683.5 | 9.61 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 411.96 | 3.55 |
MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)
| UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 33.00 | 4,240.00 |
| Queries per second | 330.00 | 42,400.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 107.87 | 0.76 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 311.59 | 2.35 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 710.24 | 6.72 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 493.24 | 3.36 |
MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)
| UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 756.00 | 5,672.00 |
| Queries per second | 7,560.00 | 56,720.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.6 | 0.73 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 13.32 | 1.76 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 591.87 | 15.81 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 82.96 | 2.97 |
MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)
| UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 22.00 | 6,657.00 |
| Queries per second | 220.00 | 66,570.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 288.94 | 0.61 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 468.04 | 1.5 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 695.61 | 11.94 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 612.21 | 2.3 |
MySQL DELETE
| UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 128.00 | 57,603.00 |
| Queries per second | 1,280.00 | 576,030.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 18.77 | 0.04 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 77.86 | 0.17 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 170.32 | 18.88 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 116.8 | 1.04 |
Redis
| UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| PING_INLINE per Second | 93,370.68 | 36,496.35 |
| PING_MBULK per Second | 114,285.71 | 39,447.73 |
| SET per Second | 72,254.34 | 38,804.81 |
| GET per Second | 57,636.89 | 37,835.79 |
| INCR per Second | 114,547.53 | 38,491.14 |
| LPUSH per Second | 54,054.05 | 40,617.39 |
| RPUSH per Second | 121,951.22 | 35,893.75 |
| LPOP per Second | 76,745.97 | 37,664.79 |
| RPOP per Second | 102,145.05 | 38,774.72 |
| SADD per Second | 89,445.44 | 38,182.51 |
| HSET per Second | 93,720.71 | 34,352.46 |
| SPOP per Second | 92,081.03 | 34,246.57 |
| ZADD per Second | 81,900.09 | 36,954.91 |
| ZPOPMIN per Second | 99,601.60 | 40,338.84 |
| LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second | 48,473.10 | 20,593.08 |
| LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second | 17,497.81 | 8,546.28 |
| LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second | 14,285.71 | 5,492.39 |
| LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second | 10,760.79 | 5,337.03 |
| MSET (10 keys) per Second | 91,074.68 | 32,362.46 |
Redis Average Latency (ms)
| UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| PING_INLINE | 0.40 | 0.91 |
| PING_MBULK | 0.30 | 0.84 |
| SET | 0.55 | 0.87 |
| GET | 0.70 | 0.88 |
| INCR | 0.30 | 0.87 |
| LPUSH | 0.74 | 0.83 |
| RPUSH | 0.29 | 0.93 |
| LPOP | 0.51 | 0.90 |
| RPOP | 0.35 | 0.87 |
| SADD | 0.42 | 0.88 |
| HSET | 0.40 | 0.97 |
| SPOP | 0.40 | 0.96 |
| ZADD | 0.44 | 0.91 |
| ZPOPMIN | 0.37 | 0.83 |
| LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) | 0.80 | 1.75 |
| LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) | 2.31 | 4.18 |
| LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) | 2.73 | 6.48 |
| LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) | 3.65 | 6.65 |
| MSET (10 keys) | 0.43 | 1.09 |
Conclusion
From the friendly robots:
After analyzing the benchmark results from both instances, it is clear that the UpCloud Balanced (1 GB) instance excels in raw performance metrics, particularly in CPU utilization, memory operations, and I/O throughput, largely due to its more powerful AMD EPYC processor. The UpCloud instance shows significantly higher Redis RPS (requests per second) values across most operations, higher CPU event throughput, and better file I/O performance with considerably lower latencies and higher throughput rates. In contrast, DigitalOcean's Regular (1 GB) instance provides solid performance but lags behind in CPU and I/O metrics, though it maintains competitive Redis and MySQL benchmarks. Ideal use cases for the UpCloud instance include CPU-intensive and I/O-heavy workloads, whereas the DigitalOcean instance would be better suited for more balanced scenarios where cost is a significant factor and slightly lower performance can be tolerated.
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.
You can also support me directly by buying me a coffee.