UpCloud Balanced (1 GB) vs. Vultr Cloud Compute (1 GB)

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Same showdown, different day. Today I spun up fresh instances from UpCloud and Vultr and ran some benchmarks. Each instance was running Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 and were created in the New York area (or close to it). Time to see who showed up today.

Overview

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Last Benchmarked Thu, 09 Jul 2026 00:42:22 GMT Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:30:37 GMT
Linux Distro Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version 7.0.0-14-generic 7.0.0-27-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 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

Head-to-head

Category winners from the latest benchmarks.

CategoryWinner
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

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) 3,295.46 2,394.45
CPU Cache Size (KB) 512.00 16,384.00
BogoMips 6,590.91 4,788.90
Events per Second 5,281.40 704.30
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.17 1.23
Average Latency (ms) 0.19 1.42
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.63 3.04
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.21 1.73

Memory

Memory Read

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Operations per second 7,916,721.84 3,595,908.88
Mebibytes per second 7,731.17 3,511.63
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.56 0.61
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Operations per second 7,831,276.08 3,455,305.83
Mebibytes per second 7,647.73 3,374.32
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.33 4.29
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Reads per Second 3,918.58 1,878.82
Writes per Second 2,612.35 1,252.51
Fsyncs per Second 8,362.41 4,014.75
Read Mebibytes per Second 61.23 29.36
Written Mebibytes per Second 40.82 19.57
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.07 0.14
Maximum Latency (ms) 56.19 11.08
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.2 0.4

Mutex

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 1,149.76 2,084.67
Average Latency (ms) 1,155.73 2,093.52
Maximum Latency (ms) 1,166.28 2,098.38
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1,170.65 2,082.91

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 0.00 4,684.00
Queries per second 0.00 46,840.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 1.71
Average Latency (ms) 0 2.13
Maximum Latency (ms) 0 9.23
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 3.02

MySQL Write-only

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 0.00 3,785.00
Queries per second 0.00 37,850.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 1.46
Average Latency (ms) 0 2.64
Maximum Latency (ms) 0 33.7
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 3.82

MySQL Read/Write

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 0.00 2,104.00
Queries per second 0.00 21,040.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 3.41
Average Latency (ms) 0 4.75
Maximum Latency (ms) 0 10.72
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 6.91

MySQL INSERT

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 0.00 7,970.00
Queries per second 0.00 79,700.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0.8
Average Latency (ms) 0 1.25
Maximum Latency (ms) 0 22.57
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 1.7

MySQL Bulk INSERT

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 0.00 734,741.00
Queries per second 0.00 7,347,410.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 0 700.22
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 0.00 107,531.00
Queries per second 0.00 1,075,310.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0.07
Average Latency (ms) 0 0.09
Maximum Latency (ms) 0 1.82
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0.13

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 0.00 3,796.00
Queries per second 0.00 37,960.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0.93
Average Latency (ms) 0 2.63
Maximum Latency (ms) 0 7.47
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 3.82

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 0.00 5,117.00
Queries per second 0.00 51,170.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0.67
Average Latency (ms) 0 1.95
Maximum Latency (ms) 0 5.04
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 3.19

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 0.00 7,164.00
Queries per second 0.00 71,640.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0.82
Average Latency (ms) 0 1.39
Maximum Latency (ms) 0 28.24
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 2.03

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 0.00 7,738.00
Queries per second 0.00 77,380.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0.78
Average Latency (ms) 0 1.29
Maximum Latency (ms) 0 17.75
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 1.76

MySQL DELETE

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 0.00 52,919.00
Queries per second 0.00 529,190.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0.07
Average Latency (ms) 0 0.19
Maximum Latency (ms) 0 26.33
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 1.04

Redis

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 45,871.56 28,835.06
PING_MBULK per Second 57,870.37 30,778.70
SET per Second 60,096.15 28,918.45
GET per Second 59,347.18 28,669.72
INCR per Second 58,997.05 30,656.04
LPUSH per Second 60,024.01 30,911.90
RPUSH per Second 59,206.63 26,968.72
LPOP per Second 59,952.04 30,618.49
RPOP per Second 59,206.63 31,123.56
SADD per Second 58,754.41 30,358.23
HSET per Second 58,275.06 29,299.74
SPOP per Second 59,559.26 30,627.87
ZADD per Second 61,312.08 30,358.23
ZPOPMIN per Second 61,050.06 31,367.63
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 45,392.64 22,138.59
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 25,859.84 11,909.01
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 16,854.88 7,708.32
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 17,455.05 7,203.57
MSET (10 keys) per Second 49,578.58 30,312.21

Redis Average Latency (ms)

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
PING_INLINE0.731.04
PING_MBULK0.510.96
SET0.511.05
GET0.511.05
INCR0.520.98
LPUSH0.520.98
RPUSH0.521.15
LPOP0.521.00
RPOP0.530.98
SADD0.520.99
HSET0.531.03
SPOP0.500.97
ZADD0.511.00
ZPOPMIN0.500.95
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.721.44
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.242.62
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)1.893.84
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)1.794.05
MSET (10 keys)0.711.07

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

Based on the benchmark results, UpCloud's Balanced (1 GB) instance outshines Vultr's Cloud Compute (1 GB) across a wide range of metrics, especially in Redis performance where it achieves higher requests per second (rps) and lower latencies. The UpCloud instance performed significantly better in operations like LPUSH and LRANGE, and also scored higher in CPU and file I/O benchmarks, demonstrating better overall throughput and lower latency. For those needing robust Redis performance, CPU efficiency, and I/O operations, the UpCloud instance is the better choice, even at a higher monthly cost.

From the friendly human:

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