VPS Showdown VPS Showdown

UpCloud Balanced (2 GB) vs. Vultr Cloud Compute (1 GB)

vs.

Same showdown, different day. Today I've got brand new instances from UpCloud and Vultr and ran some benchmarks. Each instance was spun up with Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 and all resided in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Enough talk. Here's the data.

Overview

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Last Benchmarked Sat, 01 Aug 2026 05:05:17 GMT Sat, 01 Aug 2026 05:03:02 GMT
Linux Distro Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version 7.0.0-27-generic 7.0.0-28-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 €13.00 $5.00
RAM (GB) 2 1
CPU Cores 1 1
Storage (TB) 50 25
Storage Type SSD SSD
Transfer (TB) 2 1

Head-to-head

Category winners from the latest benchmarks.

CategoryWinner
CPU (events/sec)UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Memory (read MiB/s)UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Disk I/O (MiB/s)UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
MySQL (read/write tps)UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Redis (GET/sec)UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Value (CPU events per $/mo)UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) takes 6 of 6 categories.

CPU

UpCloud – Balanced (2 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) 3,295.42 2,400.00
CPU Cache Size (KB) 512.00 16,384.00
BogoMips 6,590.84 4,799.99
Events per Second 4,736.09 763.23
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.19 1.11
Average Latency (ms) 0.21 1.31
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.23 2.63
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.24 1.44

Memory

Memory Read

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Operations per second 7,122,400.62 3,905,870.09
Mebibytes per second 6,955.47 3,814.33
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.37 0.72
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Operations per second 7,139,007.40 3,886,921.83
Mebibytes per second 6,971.69 3,795.82
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.29 0.73
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Reads per Second 3,511.30 1,890.03
Writes per Second 2,340.87 1,259.95
Fsyncs per Second 7,490.87 4,040.16
Read Mebibytes per Second 54.86 29.53
Written Mebibytes per Second 36.58 19.69
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.07 0.14
Maximum Latency (ms) 29.46 4.59
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.26 0.35

Mutex

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 1,305.60 2,141.87
Average Latency (ms) 1,313.28 2,158.92
Maximum Latency (ms) 1,319.54 2,165.16
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1,327.91 2,159.29

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 15,488.00 5,168.00
Queries per second 154,880.00 51,680.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.44 1.65
Average Latency (ms) 0.64 1.93
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.13 12.8
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.77 2.22

MySQL Write-only

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 5,617.00 3,072.00
Queries per second 56,170.00 30,720.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.87 1.58
Average Latency (ms) 1.78 3.71
Maximum Latency (ms) 47.05 3416.63
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.81 3.07

MySQL Read/Write

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 3,612.00 2,195.00
Queries per second 36,120.00 21,950.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.68 3.59
Average Latency (ms) 2.76 4.55
Maximum Latency (ms) 29.34 11.62
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.96 5.28

MySQL INSERT

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 8,793.00 6,793.00
Queries per second 87,930.00 67,930.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.53 1.03
Average Latency (ms) 1.13 1.47
Maximum Latency (ms) 33.56 42.94
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.79 1.89

MySQL Bulk INSERT

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 2,016,592.00 931,337.00
Queries per second 20,165,920.00 9,313,370.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 214.98 595.92
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 421,834.00 112,159.00
Queries per second 4,218,340.00 1,121,590.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.02 0.07
Average Latency (ms) 0.02 0.09
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.13 3.1
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.03 0.13

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 8,876.00 4,115.00
Queries per second 88,760.00 41,150.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.3 0.76
Average Latency (ms) 1.13 2.43
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.11 6.44
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.55 3.25

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 14,529.00 5,698.00
Queries per second 145,290.00 56,980.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.2 0.65
Average Latency (ms) 0.69 1.75
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.02 5.36
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.99 2.35

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 7,318.00 6,594.00
Queries per second 73,180.00 65,940.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.57 1
Average Latency (ms) 1.36 1.51
Maximum Latency (ms) 38.29 26.54
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.14 2.07

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 8,495.00 6,477.00
Queries per second 84,950.00 64,770.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.57 1.02
Average Latency (ms) 1.18 1.54
Maximum Latency (ms) 20.17 33.4
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.86 2.18

MySQL DELETE

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 150,571.00 48,339.00
Queries per second 1,505,710.00 483,390.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.02 0.06
Average Latency (ms) 0.07 0.21
Maximum Latency (ms) 73.25 22.17
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.08 1.34

Redis

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 51,626.23 33,288.95
PING_MBULK per Second 51,203.28 33,704.08
SET per Second 51,786.64 33,456.00
GET per Second 52,356.02 32,010.24
INCR per Second 52,882.07 30,147.72
LPUSH per Second 53,390.28 28,232.64
RPUSH per Second 50,479.56 32,552.08
LPOP per Second 54,318.30 32,414.91
RPOP per Second 52,603.89 32,195.75
SADD per Second 51,679.59 32,278.89
HSET per Second 49,091.80 32,776.14
SPOP per Second 47,169.81 30,147.72
ZADD per Second 50,505.05 25,412.96
ZPOPMIN per Second 50,890.59 25,920.17
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 38,080.73 19,098.55
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 24,125.45 11,506.16
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 18,611.58 7,970.67
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 16,837.85 7,017.05
MSET (10 keys) per Second 49,578.58 30,165.91

Redis Average Latency (ms)

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
PING_INLINE0.570.92
PING_MBULK0.570.90
SET0.590.92
GET0.570.94
INCR0.571.01
LPUSH0.571.08
RPUSH0.600.94
LPOP0.570.95
RPOP0.590.96
SADD0.580.94
HSET0.620.93
SPOP0.631.01
ZADD0.611.21
ZPOPMIN0.581.16
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.831.65
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.352.64
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)1.723.64
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)1.904.12
MSET (10 keys)0.731.10

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The UpCloud Balanced instance with 1 CPU and 2 GB RAM edges out the Vultr Cloud Compute instance with 1 GB RAM in overall performance due to superior Redis benchmark results, particularly in the SET operation with a higher requests per second (51,786.64 vs 33,456). Additionally, UpCloud provides better CPU performance with higher events per second (4,736.09 vs 763.23) and lower latency, making it a better choice for CPU-heavy tasks or budget-conscious users who need more headroom in performance.

From the friendly human:

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Providers & pricing

UpCloud overview Vultr overviewUpCloud Balanced (2 GB) pricing Vultr Cloud Compute (1 GB) pricing

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