UpCloud Balanced (2 GB, 2 Cores) vs. Vultr High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)

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Welcome to another round of the VPS Showdown. 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 were created in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Enough talk. Here's the data.

Overview

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Last Benchmarked Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:52 GMT Sun, 31 May 2026 13:00:55 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 €18.00 $18.00
RAM (GB) 2 2
CPU Cores 2 2
Storage (TB) 60 80
Storage Type SSD NVMe
Transfer (TB) 3 3

CPU

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Vendor AuthenticAMD GenuineIntel
Model Name AMD EPYC 9575F 64-Core Processor Intel Core Processor (Skylake, IBRS, no TSX)
Clock Speed (MHz) 3,295.46 3,791.98
CPU Cache Size (KB) 512.00 16,384.00
BogoMips 6,590.91 7,583.95
Events per Second 5,642.42 1,552.05
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.16 0.62
Average Latency (ms) 0.18 0.64
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.72 4.61
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.19 0.69

Memory

Memory Read

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Operations per second 8,011,236.04 7,875,668.83
Mebibytes per second 7,823.47 7,691.08
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.12 0.12
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Operations per second 7,931,251.63 7,729,812.11
Mebibytes per second 7,745.36 7,548.64
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.11 0.16
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Reads per Second 5,398.58 4,671.85
Writes per Second 3,599.06 3,114.56
Fsyncs per Second 11,528.98 9,976.90
Read Mebibytes per Second 84.35 73.00
Written Mebibytes per Second 56.24 48.67
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.05 0.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 42.79 2.76
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.2 0.17

Mutex

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Minimum Latency (ms) 602.81 543.27
Average Latency (ms) 614.50 554.74
Maximum Latency (ms) 628.36 563.70
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 623.33 559.50

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 24,612.00 10,621.00
Queries per second 246,120.00 106,210.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.28 0.86
Average Latency (ms) 0.41 0.94
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.49 2.5
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.54 1.03

MySQL Write-only

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 8,113.00 10,229.00
Queries per second 81,130.00 102,290.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.57 0.64
Average Latency (ms) 1.23 0.98
Maximum Latency (ms) 18.46 2.08
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.7 1.23

MySQL Read/Write

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 5,128.00 5,072.00
Queries per second 51,280.00 50,720.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.98 1.59
Average Latency (ms) 1.95 1.97
Maximum Latency (ms) 18.69 3.94
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.3 2.39

MySQL INSERT

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 10,989.00 16,038.00
Queries per second 109,890.00 160,380.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.38 0.38
Average Latency (ms) 0.91 0.62
Maximum Latency (ms) 15.68 13.18
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.27 0.8

MySQL Bulk INSERT

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 3,356,342.00 2,424,342.00
Queries per second 33,563,420.00 24,243,420.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 198.86 205.81
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 703,024.00 241,313.00
Queries per second 7,030,240.00 2,413,130.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.01 0.03
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.04
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.67 0.76
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.02 0.05

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 18,136.00 12,080.00
Queries per second 181,360.00 120,800.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.1 0.21
Average Latency (ms) 0.55 0.83
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.01 3.31
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.86 1.04

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 17,953.00 10,527.00
Queries per second 179,530.00 105,270.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.17 0.16
Average Latency (ms) 0.56 0.95
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.02 3.25
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.87 1.23

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 10,440.00 17,123.00
Queries per second 104,400.00 171,230.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.41 0.38
Average Latency (ms) 0.96 0.58
Maximum Latency (ms) 25.42 2
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.34 0.78

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 10,933.00 16,979.00
Queries per second 109,330.00 169,790.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.38 0.38
Average Latency (ms) 0.91 0.59
Maximum Latency (ms) 25.95 4.13
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.27 0.8

MySQL DELETE

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 332,632.00 156,424.00
Queries per second 3,326,320.00 1,564,240.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.01 0.03
Average Latency (ms) 0.03 0.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 26.59 4.87
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.03 0.07

Redis

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
PING_INLINE per Second 142,045.45 88,652.48
PING_MBULK per Second 131,061.59 89,605.73
SET per Second 165,016.50 90,171.33
GET per Second 142,857.14 90,579.71
INCR per Second 196,850.39 90,744.10
LPUSH per Second 249,376.56 90,497.73
RPUSH per Second 248,756.22 90,415.91
LPOP per Second 255,754.47 90,909.09
RPOP per Second 263,852.25 90,661.83
SADD per Second 251,889.16 90,252.70
HSET per Second 265,957.47 90,415.91
SPOP per Second 253,807.11 89,928.05
ZADD per Second 257,731.95 90,415.91
ZPOPMIN per Second 255,102.05 90,009.01
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 158,478.61 66,533.60
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 72,358.90 36,179.45
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 46,992.48 26,239.83
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 34,258.31 22,547.91
MSET (10 keys) per Second 244,498.77 88,105.73

Redis Average Latency (ms)

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
PING_INLINE0.210.30
PING_MBULK0.200.29
SET0.170.29
GET0.200.29
INCR0.140.28
LPUSH0.110.29
RPUSH0.110.29
LPOP0.110.28
RPOP0.100.28
SADD0.100.29
HSET0.100.29
SPOP0.100.29
ZADD0.100.29
ZPOPMIN0.100.29
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.190.39
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)0.390.71
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)0.590.97
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)0.881.14
MSET (10 keys)0.150.30

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The UpCloud Balanced instance demonstrates superior performance in memory operations and latency, achieving higher read and write throughput, and lower latency for memory operations, indicating its suitability for workloads that require high memory throughput and low latency. The Vultr High Frequency Intel instance shows better performance in CPU-intensive tasks with higher Redis RPS and more efficient MySQL operations, especially in bulk inserts and OLTP read-write tasks, suggesting it is well-suited for CPU-intensive applications and those benefiting from lower latency in database operations. Thus, UpCloud is ideal for high-memory workloads with stringent low-latency requirements, while Vultr excels in CPU-intensive tasks and efficient database operations.

From the friendly human:

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