UpCloud Balanced (1 GB) vs. Vultr High Performance Intel (1 GB)

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New day, new benchmarks. 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 or around the New York / New Jersey area. Time to see who showed up today.

Overview

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Last Benchmarked Thu, 09 Jul 2026 00:42:22 GMT Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:21 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 $6.00
RAM (GB) 1 1
CPU Cores 1 1
Storage (TB) 25 25
Storage Type SSD NVMe
Transfer (TB) 1 2

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)Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
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 Intel (1 GB)
Vendor AuthenticAMD GenuineIntel
Model Name AMD EPYC 9575F 64-Core Processor Intel Xeon Processor (Cascadelake)
Clock Speed (MHz) 3,295.46 2,893.20
CPU Cache Size (KB) 512.00 16,384.00
BogoMips 6,590.91 5,786.40
Events per Second 5,281.40 1,049.60
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.17 0.9
Average Latency (ms) 0.19 0.95
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.63 4.73
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.21 1.12

Memory

Memory Read

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Operations per second 7,916,721.84 5,247,794.58
Mebibytes per second 7,731.17 5,124.80
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.56 2.07
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Operations per second 7,831,276.08 5,230,407.37
Mebibytes per second 7,647.73 5,107.82
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.33 1.11
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Reads per Second 3,918.58 4,064.54
Writes per Second 2,612.35 2,709.66
Fsyncs per Second 8,362.41 8,672.51
Read Mebibytes per Second 61.23 63.51
Written Mebibytes per Second 40.82 42.34
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.07 0.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 56.19 6.95
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.2 0.19

Mutex

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 1,149.76 1,611.76
Average Latency (ms) 1,155.73 1,623.75
Maximum Latency (ms) 1,166.28 1,635.20
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1,170.65 1,648.20

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 0.00 8,324.00
Queries per second 0.00 83,240.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 1.06
Average Latency (ms) 0 1.2
Maximum Latency (ms) 0 5.85
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 1.5

MySQL Write-only

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 0.00 9,781.00
Queries per second 0.00 97,810.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0.77
Average Latency (ms) 0 1.02
Maximum Latency (ms) 0 10.58
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 1.39

MySQL Read/Write

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 0.00 4,006.00
Queries per second 0.00 40,060.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 2.02
Average Latency (ms) 0 2.49
Maximum Latency (ms) 0 8.48
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 3.13

MySQL INSERT

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 0.00 17,670.00
Queries per second 0.00 176,700.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0.42
Average Latency (ms) 0 0.56
Maximum Latency (ms) 0 8.68
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0.72

MySQL Bulk INSERT

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 0.00 1,317,592.00
Queries per second 0.00 13,175,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 0 320.74
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 0.00 214,470.00
Queries per second 0.00 2,144,700.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0 0.05
Maximum Latency (ms) 0 3.23
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0.07

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 0.00 5,913.00
Queries per second 0.00 59,130.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0.53
Average Latency (ms) 0 1.69
Maximum Latency (ms) 0 6.4
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 2.22

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 0.00 8,048.00
Queries per second 0.00 80,480.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0.5
Average Latency (ms) 0 1.24
Maximum Latency (ms) 0 3.52
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 1.7

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 0.00 17,291.00
Queries per second 0.00 172,910.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0.44
Average Latency (ms) 0 0.58
Maximum Latency (ms) 0 7.39
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0.75

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 0.00 18,069.00
Queries per second 0.00 180,690.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0.41
Average Latency (ms) 0 0.55
Maximum Latency (ms) 0 5.51
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0.7

MySQL DELETE

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 0.00 154,947.00
Queries per second 0.00 1,549,470.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0 0.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 0 9.7
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0.11

Redis

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 45,871.56 45,766.59
PING_MBULK per Second 57,870.37 44,424.70
SET per Second 60,096.15 45,045.04
GET per Second 59,347.18 45,065.34
INCR per Second 58,997.05 46,663.56
LPUSH per Second 60,024.01 44,603.03
RPUSH per Second 59,206.63 46,146.75
LPOP per Second 59,952.04 44,903.46
RPOP per Second 59,206.63 44,523.60
SADD per Second 58,754.41 45,392.64
HSET per Second 58,275.06 46,468.40
SPOP per Second 59,559.26 47,036.69
ZADD per Second 61,312.08 45,682.96
ZPOPMIN per Second 61,050.06 45,871.56
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 45,392.64 31,387.32
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 25,859.84 17,470.30
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 16,854.88 12,192.15
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 17,455.05 10,672.36
MSET (10 keys) per Second 49,578.58 44,503.79

Redis Average Latency (ms)

UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
PING_INLINE0.730.67
PING_MBULK0.510.67
SET0.510.68
GET0.510.68
INCR0.520.66
LPUSH0.520.69
RPUSH0.520.67
LPOP0.520.69
RPOP0.530.70
SADD0.520.68
HSET0.530.67
SPOP0.500.65
ZADD0.510.68
ZPOPMIN0.500.67
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.720.99
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.241.78
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)1.892.68
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)1.792.99
MSET (10 keys)0.710.75

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

In the benchmark comparisons, UpCloud's Balanced (1 GB) instance outperforms Vultr's High Performance Intel (1 GB) in CPU-intensive tasks and memory operations, as seen in the significantly higher rates for Redis commands like LPUSH, GET, and memory operations per second, with UpCloud achieving 60,096.15 RPS for LPUSH and 7,831,276 write operations per second for memory compared to Vultr's 44,603.03 RPS for LPUSH and 5,230,407 write operations per second for memory. However, Vultr shows stronger performance in MySQL bulk insert operations, reaching 130,819.67 TPS against UpCloud's non-reporting in this category. UpCloud thus wins overall for CPU-heavy and memory-intensive tasks, while Vultr edges out in high transaction processing scenarios like MySQL bulk inserts, making UpCloud the better choice for general-purpose workloads needing low latency and high throughput in memory and CPU operations.

From the friendly human:

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