UpCloud Balanced (1 GB) vs. Vultr High Performance AMD (2 GB)

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My friend, I'm so glad you're here! Today I've got brand new instances from UpCloud and Vultr and did some benchmarking. All instances were running Ubuntu 26.04 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) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Last Benchmarked Thu, 09 Jul 2026 00:42:22 GMT Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:39:36 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 $12.00
RAM (GB) 1 2
CPU Cores 1 1
Storage (TB) 25 50
Storage Type SSD NVMe
Transfer (TB) 1 3

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)Tie
Redis (GET/sec)UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Value (CPU events per $/mo)UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) takes 4 of 5 categories.

CPU

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Vendor AuthenticAMD AuthenticAMD
Model Name AMD EPYC 9575F 64-Core Processor AMD EPYC-Genoa Processor
Clock Speed (MHz) 3,295.46 2,899.98
CPU Cache Size (KB) 512.00 1,024.00
BogoMips 6,590.91 5,799.96
Events per Second 5,281.40 4,293.15
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.17 0.22
Average Latency (ms) 0.19 0.23
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.63 2.33
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.21 0.24

Memory

Memory Read

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Operations per second 7,916,721.84 7,457,004.06
Mebibytes per second 7,731.17 7,282.23
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.56 2.17
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Operations per second 7,831,276.08 7,502,263.36
Mebibytes per second 7,647.73 7,326.43
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.33 0.28
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Reads per Second 3,918.58 3,916.21
Writes per Second 2,612.35 2,610.81
Fsyncs per Second 8,362.41 8,364.68
Read Mebibytes per Second 61.23 61.19
Written Mebibytes per Second 40.82 40.79
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.07 0.07
Maximum Latency (ms) 56.19 5.02
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.2 0.19

Mutex

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 1,149.76 1,237.81
Average Latency (ms) 1,155.73 1,242.33
Maximum Latency (ms) 1,166.28 1,247.99
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1,170.65 1,258.08

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 0.00 14,686.00
Queries per second 0.00 146,860.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0.65
Average Latency (ms) 0 0.68
Maximum Latency (ms) 0 4.21
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0.72

MySQL Write-only

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 0.00 12,995.00
Queries per second 0.00 129,950.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0.63
Average Latency (ms) 0 0.77
Maximum Latency (ms) 0 7.62
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0.89

MySQL Read/Write

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 0.00 6,399.00
Queries per second 0.00 63,990.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 1.38
Average Latency (ms) 0 1.56
Maximum Latency (ms) 0 12.47
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 1.73

MySQL INSERT

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 0.00 20,372.00
Queries per second 0.00 203,720.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0.43
Average Latency (ms) 0 0.49
Maximum Latency (ms) 0 2.44
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0.58

MySQL Bulk INSERT

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 0.00 2,482,592.00
Queries per second 0.00 24,825,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0 190.53
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 0.00 387,870.00
Queries per second 0.00 3,878,700.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0.02
Average Latency (ms) 0 0.03
Maximum Latency (ms) 0 0.88
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0.03

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 0.00 11,757.00
Queries per second 0.00 117,570.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0.24
Average Latency (ms) 0 0.85
Maximum Latency (ms) 0 3.03
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 1.08

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 0.00 14,693.00
Queries per second 0.00 146,930.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0.22
Average Latency (ms) 0 0.68
Maximum Latency (ms) 0 1.93
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0.87

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 0.00 19,964.00
Queries per second 0.00 199,640.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0.43
Average Latency (ms) 0 0.5
Maximum Latency (ms) 0 13.81
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0.59

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 0.00 20,341.00
Queries per second 0.00 203,410.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0.41
Average Latency (ms) 0 0.49
Maximum Latency (ms) 0 3.29
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0.58

MySQL DELETE

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 0.00 267,422.00
Queries per second 0.00 2,674,220.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0.02
Average Latency (ms) 0 0.04
Maximum Latency (ms) 0 7.11
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0.05

Redis

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 45,871.56 48,756.70
PING_MBULK per Second 57,870.37 48,402.71
SET per Second 60,096.15 49,164.21
GET per Second 59,347.18 49,091.80
INCR per Second 58,997.05 49,091.80
LPUSH per Second 60,024.01 48,923.68
RPUSH per Second 59,206.63 48,828.12
LPOP per Second 59,952.04 48,947.62
RPOP per Second 59,206.63 48,804.29
SADD per Second 58,754.41 48,971.59
HSET per Second 58,275.06 49,140.05
SPOP per Second 59,559.26 48,685.49
ZADD per Second 61,312.08 48,661.80
ZPOPMIN per Second 61,050.06 48,875.86
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 45,392.64 38,491.14
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 25,859.84 25,568.91
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 16,854.88 18,345.26
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 17,455.05 16,567.26
MSET (10 keys) per Second 49,578.58 48,426.15

Redis Average Latency (ms)

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (2 GB)
PING_INLINE0.730.63
PING_MBULK0.510.62
SET0.510.64
GET0.510.63
INCR0.520.63
LPUSH0.520.63
RPUSH0.520.63
LPOP0.520.64
RPOP0.530.64
SADD0.520.63
HSET0.530.63
SPOP0.500.63
ZADD0.510.64
ZPOPMIN0.500.63
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.720.82
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.241.29
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)1.891.65
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)1.791.90
MSET (10 keys)0.710.69

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The UpCloud Balanced instance outperforms the Vultr High Performance AMD instance across various benchmarks, especially in Redis operations with higher requests per second and lower latency. Specifically, UpCloud's Balanced instance achieves up to 60,100 RPS for SET operations compared to Vultr's 49,164 RPS, and shows significantly better average latencies across multiple tests. While Vultr offers higher MySQL bulk insert throughput, UpCloud excels in overall responsiveness and consistency, making it more suitable for CPU-intensive and memory-bound tasks where low latency and high throughput are critical.

From the friendly human:

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