VPS Showdown VPS Showdown

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

vs.

Welcome to another round of the VPS Showdown. Today I've got brand new instances from UpCloud and Vultr and ran my world famous suite of benchmarking scripts. All instances were running Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 and were created in the New York area (or close to it). Time to see who showed up today.

Overview

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Last Benchmarked Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:32:51 GMT Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:30:37 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 €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) 3,295.48 2,394.45
CPU Cache Size (KB) 512.00 16,384.00
BogoMips 6,590.95 4,788.90
Events per Second 4,956.10 704.30
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.18 1.23
Average Latency (ms) 0.2 1.42
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.23 3.04
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.21 1.73

Memory

Memory Read

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Operations per second 7,348,809.99 3,595,908.88
Mebibytes per second 7,176.57 3,511.63
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.4 0.61
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Operations per second 7,078,785.07 3,455,305.83
Mebibytes per second 6,912.88 3,374.32
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.2 4.29
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Reads per Second 3,766.66 1,878.82
Writes per Second 2,511.11 1,252.51
Fsyncs per Second 8,036.14 4,014.75
Read Mebibytes per Second 58.85 29.36
Written Mebibytes per Second 39.24 19.57
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.07 0.14
Maximum Latency (ms) 19.19 11.08
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.24 0.4

Mutex

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 1,248.77 2,084.67
Average Latency (ms) 1,256.62 2,093.52
Maximum Latency (ms) 1,260.30 2,098.38
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1,258.08 2,082.91

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 16,759.00 4,684.00
Queries per second 167,590.00 46,840.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.41 1.71
Average Latency (ms) 0.6 2.13
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.26 9.23
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.75 3.02

MySQL Write-only

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 6,115.00 3,785.00
Queries per second 61,150.00 37,850.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.73 1.46
Average Latency (ms) 1.63 2.64
Maximum Latency (ms) 30.18 33.7
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.76 3.82

MySQL Read/Write

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 4,692.00 2,104.00
Queries per second 46,920.00 21,040.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.24 3.41
Average Latency (ms) 2.13 4.75
Maximum Latency (ms) 23.43 10.72
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.86 6.91

MySQL INSERT

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 8,886.00 7,970.00
Queries per second 88,860.00 79,700.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.5 0.8
Average Latency (ms) 1.12 1.25
Maximum Latency (ms) 26.84 22.57
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.93 1.7

MySQL Bulk INSERT

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 2,278,717.00 734,741.00
Queries per second 22,787,170.00 7,347,410.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 236.89 700.22
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 425,431.00 107,531.00
Queries per second 4,254,310.00 1,075,310.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.02 0.07
Average Latency (ms) 0.02 0.09
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.3 1.82
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.03 0.13

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 9,684.00 3,796.00
Queries per second 96,840.00 37,960.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.29 0.93
Average Latency (ms) 1.03 2.63
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.24 7.47
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.37 3.82

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 15,489.00 5,117.00
Queries per second 154,890.00 51,170.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.15 0.67
Average Latency (ms) 0.64 1.95
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.79 5.04
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.99 3.19

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 10,759.00 7,164.00
Queries per second 107,590.00 71,640.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.46 0.82
Average Latency (ms) 0.93 1.39
Maximum Latency (ms) 34.7 28.24
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.39 2.03

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 11,023.00 7,738.00
Queries per second 110,230.00 77,380.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.45 0.78
Average Latency (ms) 0.91 1.29
Maximum Latency (ms) 33.4 17.75
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.32 1.76

MySQL DELETE

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
Transactions per second 212,798.00 52,919.00
Queries per second 2,127,980.00 529,190.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.02 0.07
Average Latency (ms) 0.05 0.19
Maximum Latency (ms) 19.8 26.33
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.05 1.04

Redis

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 55,126.79 28,835.06
PING_MBULK per Second 54,794.52 30,778.70
SET per Second 55,710.31 28,918.45
GET per Second 55,340.34 28,669.72
INCR per Second 54,734.54 30,656.04
LPUSH per Second 52,994.17 30,911.90
RPUSH per Second 56,689.34 26,968.72
LPOP per Second 57,240.98 30,618.49
RPOP per Second 57,110.22 31,123.56
SADD per Second 55,401.66 30,358.23
HSET per Second 55,218.11 29,299.74
SPOP per Second 55,524.71 30,627.87
ZADD per Second 56,561.09 30,358.23
ZPOPMIN per Second 53,191.49 31,367.63
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 45,998.16 22,138.59
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 24,987.51 11,909.01
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 18,031.01 7,708.32
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 16,369.29 7,203.57
MSET (10 keys) per Second 54,884.74 30,312.21

Redis Average Latency (ms)

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (1 GB)
PING_INLINE0.541.04
PING_MBULK0.530.96
SET0.551.05
GET0.551.05
INCR0.560.98
LPUSH0.580.98
RPUSH0.541.15
LPOP0.541.00
RPOP0.540.98
SADD0.550.99
HSET0.561.03
SPOP0.540.97
ZADD0.551.00
ZPOPMIN0.560.95
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.711.44
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.292.62
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)1.773.84
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)2.064.05
MSET (10 keys)0.651.07

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The UpCloud Balanced instance, with benchmark results showing significantly higher performance in Redis operations, like RPUSH at 56,689.34 RPS compared to Vultr's 31,123.56 RPS, and lower latencies, is the overall winner for scenarios requiring high throughput and low latency, such as real-time data processing or high-frequency trading platforms. For budget-conscious users needing moderate performance with better price-to-performance ratio, the Vultr Cloud Compute instance is still a solid choice, though it lags behind in CPU-intensive tasks and high IOPS workloads.

From the friendly human:

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