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

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My friend, I'm so glad you're here! Today I've spun up some brand new instance from DigitalOcean and UpCloud to run some benchmarks on. Each instance was running 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, 10 Jun 2026 03:00:58 GMT Mon, 08 Jun 2026 21:00:52 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 8.0.46-0ubuntu0.24.04.2 8.0.46-0ubuntu0.24.04.2
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) 3,295.46 2,294.61
CPU Cache Size (KB) 512.00 4,096.00
BogoMips 6,590.91 4,589.21
Events per Second 5,705.40 426.06
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.16 0.97
Average Latency (ms) 0.18 2.34
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.27 11.13
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.19 4.03

Memory

Memory Read

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Operations per second 8,056,617.47 3,186,627.49
Mebibytes per second 7,867.79 3,111.94
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.28 3.13
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Operations per second 7,635,465.92 3,529,570.35
Mebibytes per second 7,456.51 3,446.85
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.72 0.73
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Reads per Second 4,880.21 531.03
Writes per Second 3,253.44 354.02
Fsyncs per Second 10,411.32 1,137.44
Read Mebibytes per Second 76.25 8.30
Written Mebibytes per Second 50.83 5.53
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.05 0.49
Maximum Latency (ms) 25.28 34.65
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.19 2.14

Mutex

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 1,094.52 2,179.34
Average Latency (ms) 1,098.99 2,192.91
Maximum Latency (ms) 1,105.13 2,199.32
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1,109.09 2,198.52

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second 27,863.00 4,443.00
Queries per second 278,630.00 44,430.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.28 1.27
Average Latency (ms) 0.36 2.25
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.23 10.86
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.5 2.76

MySQL Write-only

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second 8,234.00 732.00
Queries per second 82,340.00 7,320.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.51 5.99
Average Latency (ms) 1.21 13.67
Maximum Latency (ms) 109.78 43.33
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.7 22.69

MySQL Read/Write

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second 5,658.00 401.00
Queries per second 56,580.00 4,010.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.02 12.07
Average Latency (ms) 1.77 24.97
Maximum Latency (ms) 29.92 157.04
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.43 44.17

MySQL INSERT

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second 10,677.00 867.00
Queries per second 106,770.00 8,670.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.4 4.9
Average Latency (ms) 0.93 11.54
Maximum Latency (ms) 51.91 78.4
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.32 21.89

MySQL Bulk INSERT

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second 3,065,346.00 701,975.00
Queries per second 30,653,460.00 7,019,750.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 175.55 927.69
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second 904,699.00 136,327.00
Queries per second 9,046,990.00 1,363,270.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.01 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.07
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.15 8.26
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.02 0.11

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second 18,275.00 3,493.00
Queries per second 182,750.00 34,930.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.16 0.97
Average Latency (ms) 0.55 2.86
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.14 30.03
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.81 3.96

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second 18,836.00 2,982.00
Queries per second 188,360.00 29,820.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.15 0.73
Average Latency (ms) 0.53 3.35
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.6 7.26
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.77 5

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second 9,429.00 471.00
Queries per second 94,290.00 4,710.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.41 7.73
Average Latency (ms) 1.06 21.3
Maximum Latency (ms) 70.38 316.49
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.52 42.61

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second 10,777.00 759.00
Queries per second 107,770.00 7,590.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.4 5.39
Average Latency (ms) 0.93 13.17
Maximum Latency (ms) 41.92 186.75
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.37 24.38

MySQL DELETE

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second 318,714.00 3,484.00
Queries per second 3,187,140.00 34,840.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.01 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.03 2.87
Maximum Latency (ms) 74.81 53.15
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.03 14.46

Redis

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 174,216.03 37,936.27
PING_MBULK per Second 171,232.88 29,239.77
SET per Second 170,357.75 31,142.95
GET per Second 179,856.11 37,064.49
INCR per Second 180,180.17 36,886.76
LPUSH per Second 168,634.06 36,403.35
RPUSH per Second 174,216.03 36,310.82
LPOP per Second 171,526.58 35,087.72
RPOP per Second 170,940.17 36,873.16
SADD per Second 166,666.66 37,425.15
HSET per Second 166,666.66 35,448.42
SPOP per Second 168,634.06 31,867.43
ZADD per Second 171,232.88 33,579.59
ZPOPMIN per Second 175,746.92 36,886.76
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 89,206.06 15,003.75
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 42,444.82 6,284.57
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 25,866.53 4,604.48
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 21,070.38 3,898.18
MSET (10 keys) per Second 145,137.88 24,789.29

Redis Average Latency (ms)

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
PING_INLINE0.190.88
PING_MBULK0.191.12
SET0.201.06
GET0.180.90
INCR0.190.90
LPUSH0.200.92
RPUSH0.190.92
LPOP0.200.96
RPOP0.200.92
SADD0.200.89
HSET0.200.94
SPOP0.201.02
ZADD0.200.99
ZPOPMIN0.190.89
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.402.40
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)0.835.55
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)1.387.48
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)1.718.75
MSET (10 keys)0.251.51

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The UpCloud Balanced (1 GB) instance outperforms the DigitalOcean Regular (1 GB) in all benchmark categories, especially in CPU and Redis operations, likely due to the higher clock speed and more substantial cache size of the AMD EPYC 9575F processor. The UpCloud instance shows significantly higher rates of requests per second and lower latencies across all Redis commands, more efficient file I/O operations, and better memory performance. However, DigitalOcean’s instance still provides respectable benchmarks, especially in lower-level operations such as file and memory latencies and throughputs. Ideal use cases for the UpCloud instance would be applications requiring high CPU performance, such as large-scale caching with Redis or heavy database transactions, while the DigitalOcean instance might be better suited for more modest workloads or scenarios where cost is a primary concern.

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.

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