UpCloud Balanced (1 GB) vs. Vultr Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Fresh benchmarks coming at ya. Today I've spun up brand new instance from UpCloud and Vultr and did some benchmarking. Each instance was spun up with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and all resided in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Without further ado, here's the results.
Overview
| UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Last Benchmarked | Mon, 25 Aug 2025 19:00:53 GMT | Tue, 26 Aug 2025 17:00:52 GMT |
| Linux Distro | Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 | Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 |
| Kernel Version | 6.8.0-63-generic | 6.8.0-60-generic |
| MySQL Version | 8.0.43-0ubuntu0.24.04.1 | 8.0.43-0ubuntu0.24.04.1 |
| Redis Version | 7.0.15 | 7.0.15 |
| Location | New York, NY | Newark, NJ |
| Monthly Price | €7.00 | $5.00 |
| 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) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | AuthenticAMD | GenuineIntel |
| Model Name | AMD EPYC 9575F 64-Core Processor | Intel Core Processor (Broadwell, no TSX, IBRS) |
| Clock Speed (MHz) | 3,295.45 | 2,394.45 |
| CPU Cache Size (KB) | 512.00 | 16,384.00 |
| BogoMips | 6,590.90 | 4,788.90 |
| Events per Second | 5,197.84 | 861.36 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.17 | 1.14 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.19 | 1.16 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 1.49 | 2.77 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0.22 | 1.21 |
Memory
Memory Read
| UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Operations per second | 6,990,244.41 | 4,189,369.10 |
| Mebibytes per second | 6,826.41 | 4,091.18 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 0.69 | 1.75 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
Memory Write
| UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Operations per second | 6,855,048.18 | 4,222,451.44 |
| Mebibytes per second | 6,694.38 | 4,123.49 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 0.93 | 0.72 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
File I/O
| UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Reads per Second | 4,115.12 | 2,500.89 |
| Writes per Second | 2,743.41 | 1,667.19 |
| Fsyncs per Second | 8,789.69 | 5,346.52 |
| Read Mebibytes per Second | 64.30 | 39.08 |
| Written Mebibytes per Second | 42.87 | 26.05 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.06 | 0.1 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 21.65 | 3.4 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0.22 | 0.3 |
Mutex
| UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 1,293.41 | 2,081.46 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 1,298.04 | 2,089.86 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 1,305.02 | 2,098.02 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 1,304.21 | 2,082.91 |
MySQL
MySQL Read-only
| UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 21,643.00 | 5,526.00 |
| Queries per second | 216,430.00 | 55,260.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.29 | 1.7 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.46 | 1.81 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 6.72 | 11.86 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0.65 | 1.93 |
MySQL Write-only
| UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 7,317.00 | 5,084.00 |
| Queries per second | 73,170.00 | 50,840.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.59 | 1.45 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 1.37 | 1.96 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 67.35 | 10.63 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 2.18 | 2.61 |
MySQL Read/Write
| UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 4,249.00 | 2,327.00 |
| Queries per second | 42,490.00 | 23,270.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 1.15 | 3.56 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 2.35 | 4.3 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 45.57 | 11.69 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 3.75 | 5.09 |
MySQL INSERT
| UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 8,829.00 | 9,678.00 |
| Queries per second | 88,290.00 | 96,780.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.44 | 0.71 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 1.13 | 1.03 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 40.83 | 5.87 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 1.67 | 1.27 |
MySQL Bulk INSERT
| UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 2,744,717.00 | 964,103.00 |
| Queries per second | 27,447,170.00 | 9,641,030.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0 | 0.01 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 179.6 | 555.35 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
MySQL SELECT
| UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 793,218.00 | 123,440.00 |
| Queries per second | 7,932,180.00 | 1,234,400.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.01 | 0.07 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.01 | 0.08 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 111.29 | 6.36 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0.02 | 0.1 |
MySQL SELECT (Random Points)
| UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 13,589.00 | 5,660.00 |
| Queries per second | 135,890.00 | 56,600.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.18 | 0.7 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.73 | 1.77 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 3.88 | 5.62 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 1.16 | 2.3 |
MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)
| UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 14,875.00 | 5,897.00 |
| Queries per second | 148,750.00 | 58,970.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.19 | 0.59 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.67 | 1.69 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 3.04 | 5.37 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 1.04 | 2.22 |
MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)
| UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 8,322.00 | 8,813.00 |
| Queries per second | 83,220.00 | 88,130.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.48 | 0.72 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 1.2 | 1.13 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 50.42 | 6.19 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 1.89 | 1.61 |
MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)
| UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 9,391.00 | 9,183.00 |
| Queries per second | 93,910.00 | 91,830.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.42 | 0.7 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 1.06 | 1.09 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 45.75 | 7.93 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 1.7 | 1.37 |
MySQL DELETE
| UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 320,169.00 | 60,278.00 |
| Queries per second | 3,201,690.00 | 602,780.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.01 | 0.07 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.03 | 0.16 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 39.95 | 12.23 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0.03 | 0.95 |
Redis
| UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| PING_INLINE per Second | 146,627.56 | 37,678.97 |
| PING_MBULK per Second | 137,362.64 | 37,467.22 |
| SET per Second | 130,039.02 | 36,469.73 |
| GET per Second | 132,100.39 | 38,022.81 |
| INCR per Second | 140,646.97 | 37,907.50 |
| LPUSH per Second | 131,752.31 | 30,238.89 |
| RPUSH per Second | 144,092.22 | 35,561.88 |
| LPOP per Second | 134,952.77 | 37,523.45 |
| RPOP per Second | 158,227.84 | 37,750.09 |
| SADD per Second | 158,730.16 | 37,678.97 |
| HSET per Second | 157,232.70 | 37,313.43 |
| SPOP per Second | 163,132.14 | 37,850.11 |
| ZADD per Second | 156,739.81 | 37,369.21 |
| ZPOPMIN per Second | 159,235.66 | 38,986.36 |
| LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second | 75,414.78 | 24,125.45 |
| LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second | 38,240.92 | 12,500.00 |
| LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second | 26,274.30 | 8,862.11 |
| LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second | 19,860.97 | 7,744.73 |
| MSET (10 keys) per Second | 129,032.27 | 34,554.25 |
Redis Average Latency (ms)
| UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) | Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| PING_INLINE | 0.23 | 0.88 |
| PING_MBULK | 0.24 | 0.88 |
| SET | 0.26 | 0.91 |
| GET | 0.25 | 0.88 |
| INCR | 0.24 | 0.88 |
| LPUSH | 0.26 | 1.08 |
| RPUSH | 0.23 | 0.94 |
| LPOP | 0.25 | 0.90 |
| RPOP | 0.21 | 0.89 |
| SADD | 0.21 | 0.88 |
| HSET | 0.22 | 0.90 |
| SPOP | 0.20 | 0.88 |
| ZADD | 0.22 | 0.90 |
| ZPOPMIN | 0.21 | 0.87 |
| LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) | 0.48 | 1.41 |
| LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) | 0.95 | 2.74 |
| LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) | 1.38 | 3.90 |
| LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) | 1.82 | 4.41 |
| MSET (10 keys) | 0.28 | 1.02 |
Conclusion
From the friendly robots:
After analyzing the benchmark results from both UpCloud and Vultr, it's clear that UpCloud's Balanced 1 GB instance outperforms Vultr's Cloud Compute 1 GB in most metrics, particularly in Redis operations and MySQL OLTP tasks, showcasing higher requests per second and lower latency across the board. UpCloud's instance leverages an AMD EPYC 9575F processor, which provides superior performance in CPU-intensive tasks and memory operations, evidenced by higher throughput and lower latency in file I/O and memory benchmarks. Vultr, on the other hand, uses an Intel Core processor, which, while competent, lags behind in specific benchmarks like MySQL read-write operations and Redis LRANGE commands, indicating potential trade-offs in performance for certain workloads. Given these results, UpCloud's instance is better suited for applications that demand high CPU performance and low latency, such as real-time data processing and high-concurrency web services, whereas Vultr's instance might be more cost-effective for less demanding applications.
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 UpCloud and Vultr.
You can also support me directly by buying me a coffee.