UpCloud Balanced (1 GB) vs. Vultr Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)

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My friend, I'm so glad you're here! Today I've spun up some brand new instance from UpCloud and Vultr and ran some benchmarks. Each instance was running Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and all resided in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Let's get into the numbers.

Overview

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Last Benchmarked Fri, 22 May 2026 11:00:52 GMT Sat, 23 May 2026 11:00:52 GMT
Linux Distro Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version 6.8.0-111-generic 6.8.0-117-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 Newark, NJ
Monthly Price €7.00 $40.00
RAM (GB) 1 8
CPU Cores 1 4
Storage (TB) 25 160
Storage Type SSD SSD
Transfer (TB) 1 4

CPU

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Vendor AuthenticAMD GenuineIntel
Model Name AMD EPYC 9575F 64-Core Processor Intel Xeon Processor (Skylake, IBRS)
Clock Speed (MHz) 3,295.45 2,593.90
CPU Cache Size (KB) 512.00 16,384.00
BogoMips 6,590.90 5,187.80
Events per Second 5,248.20 1,100.82
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.18 0.88
Average Latency (ms) 0.19 0.91
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.79 1.56
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.2 0.97

Memory

Memory Read

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Operations per second 6,801,282.43 3,685,781.23
Mebibytes per second 6,641.88 3,599.40
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.29 1.03
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Operations per second 5,773,502.12 3,590,629.63
Mebibytes per second 5,638.19 3,506.47
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.02 1.16
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Reads per Second 3,347.40 4,999.39
Writes per Second 2,231.60 3,332.93
Fsyncs per Second 7,151.99 10,670.47
Read Mebibytes per Second 52.30 78.12
Written Mebibytes per Second 34.87 52.08
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.08 0.05
Maximum Latency (ms) 45.95 37.52
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.25 0.18

Mutex

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Minimum Latency (ms) 1,448.88 369.37
Average Latency (ms) 1,453.66 416.22
Maximum Latency (ms) 1,458.86 441.77
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1,453.01 442.73

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 186.00 5,144.00
Queries per second 1,860.00 51,440.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.33 1.72
Average Latency (ms) 54.83 1.94
Maximum Latency (ms) 1519.77 7.67
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 320.17 2.35

MySQL Write-only

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 7.00 5,108.00
Queries per second 70.00 51,080.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1299.84 1.15
Average Latency (ms) 1584.29 1.96
Maximum Latency (ms) 1904.57 12.52
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1903.57 2.71

MySQL Read/Write

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 1.00 2,247.00
Queries per second 10.00 22,470.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 16296.58 3.08
Average Latency (ms) 16296.58 4.45
Maximum Latency (ms) 16296.58 29.7
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 16224.31 5.28

MySQL INSERT

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 92.00 7,630.00
Queries per second 920.00 76,300.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.47 0.71
Average Latency (ms) 110.5 1.31
Maximum Latency (ms) 255.29 29.81
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 204.11 1.55

MySQL Bulk INSERT

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
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) 293.41 505.86
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 613,969.00 149,465.00
Queries per second 6,139,690.00 1,494,650.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.01 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.02 0.07
Maximum Latency (ms) 211.08 1.22
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.02 0.09

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 36.00 4,249.00
Queries per second 360.00 42,490.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 132 0.83
Average Latency (ms) 280.61 2.35
Maximum Latency (ms) 683.5 6.6
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 411.96 3.02

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 33.00 2,637.00
Queries per second 330.00 26,370.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 107.87 0.94
Average Latency (ms) 311.59 3.79
Maximum Latency (ms) 710.24 6.3
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 493.24 5.09

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 756.00 7,166.00
Queries per second 7,560.00 71,660.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.6 0.7
Average Latency (ms) 13.32 1.39
Maximum Latency (ms) 591.87 28.84
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 82.96 1.79

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 22.00 7,661.00
Queries per second 220.00 76,610.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 288.94 0.7
Average Latency (ms) 468.04 1.3
Maximum Latency (ms) 695.61 33.97
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 612.21 1.58

MySQL DELETE

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 128.00 69,690.00
Queries per second 1,280.00 696,900.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 18.77 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 77.86 0.14
Maximum Latency (ms) 170.32 27.73
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 116.8 0.87

Redis

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
PING_INLINE per Second 93,370.68 54,436.58
PING_MBULK per Second 114,285.71 48,828.12
SET per Second 72,254.34 51,572.98
GET per Second 57,636.89 48,239.27
INCR per Second 114,547.53 52,328.62
LPUSH per Second 54,054.05 45,454.54
RPUSH per Second 121,951.22 49,751.24
LPOP per Second 76,745.97 53,390.28
RPOP per Second 102,145.05 53,648.07
SADD per Second 89,445.44 48,285.85
HSET per Second 93,720.71 51,493.30
SPOP per Second 92,081.03 52,910.05
ZADD per Second 81,900.09 53,504.55
ZPOPMIN per Second 99,601.60 53,590.57
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 48,473.10 28,645.09
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 17,497.81 13,131.98
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 14,285.71 8,529.51
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 10,760.79 7,479.99
MSET (10 keys) per Second 91,074.68 49,212.60

Redis Average Latency (ms)

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
PING_INLINE0.400.47
PING_MBULK0.300.53
SET0.550.50
GET0.700.54
INCR0.300.49
LPUSH0.740.58
RPUSH0.290.52
LPOP0.510.49
RPOP0.350.48
SADD0.420.54
HSET0.400.53
SPOP0.400.49
ZADD0.440.48
ZPOPMIN0.370.48
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.800.91
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)2.311.94
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)2.733.00
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)3.653.43
MSET (10 keys)0.430.77

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

After analyzing the benchmarks for both UpCloud and Vultr instances, it is evident that Vultr's Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores) instance offers superior performance metrics across various metrics, including higher CPU events per second, lower average latencies in Redis operations, and greater file IO throughput, while UpCloud's Balanced (1 GB) instance provides excellent performance in specific tasks like MySQL bulk inserts and Redis SET operations. Vultr's instance is better suited for workloads that require more CPU cores and RAM, such as high-concurrency web services or data processing tasks, whereas UpCloud's instance is ideal for lower resource-intensive applications like small web applications or services where lower cost is a priority.

From the friendly human:

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