Same showdown, different day. Today I've spun up brand new instance from UpCloud and Vultr and ran my world famous suite of benchmarking scripts. All instances were spun up with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and were created in the New York area (or close to it). Enough talk. Here's the data.
Overview
UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Last Benchmarked
Wed, 13 May 2026 07:00:52 GMT
Sun, 10 May 2026 23:00:52 GMT
Linux Distro
Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64
Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version
6.8.0-111-generic
6.8.0-111-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
€13.00
$40.00
RAM (GB)
2
8
CPU Cores
1
4
Storage (TB)
50
160
Storage Type
SSD
SSD
Transfer (TB)
2
4
CPU
UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Vendor
AuthenticAMD
GenuineIntel
Model Name
AMD EPYC 9575F 64-Core Processor
Intel Xeon Processor (Skylake, IBRS)
Clock Speed (MHz)
3,295.48
2,593.90
CPU Cache Size (KB)
512.00
16,384.00
BogoMips
6,590.95
5,187.80
Events per Second
5,025.21
1,019.64
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.18
0.89
Average Latency (ms)
0.2
0.98
Maximum Latency (ms)
5.35
1.69
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
0.22
1.18
Memory
Memory Read
UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Operations per second
5,932,400.60
3,471,971.03
Mebibytes per second
5,793.36
3,390.60
Minimum Latency (ms)
0
0
Average Latency (ms)
0
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
2.22
0.19
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
0
0
Memory Write
UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Operations per second
6,706,599.41
3,453,487.12
Mebibytes per second
6,549.41
3,372.55
Minimum Latency (ms)
0
0
Average Latency (ms)
0
0
Maximum Latency (ms)
1.56
0.51
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
0
0
File I/O
UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Reads per Second
3,214.64
4,705.72
Writes per Second
2,143.03
3,137.15
Fsyncs per Second
6,864.71
10,046.46
Read Mebibytes per Second
50.23
73.53
Written Mebibytes per Second
33.48
49.02
Minimum Latency (ms)
0
0
Average Latency (ms)
0.08
0.06
Maximum Latency (ms)
20.14
16.97
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
0.31
0.19
Mutex
UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Minimum Latency (ms)
1,349.13
169.72
Average Latency (ms)
1,353.60
375.85
Maximum Latency (ms)
1,361.99
464.95
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
1,352.03
467.30
MySQL
MySQL Read-only
UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second
19,090.00
4,535.00
Queries per second
190,900.00
45,350.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.31
1.75
Average Latency (ms)
0.52
2.2
Maximum Latency (ms)
5.34
6.38
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
0.64
2.76
MySQL Write-only
UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second
3,974.00
4,365.00
Queries per second
39,740.00
43,650.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.87
1.38
Average Latency (ms)
2.51
2.29
Maximum Latency (ms)
38.67
24.46
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
5
2.86
MySQL Read/Write
UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second
2,830.00
2,014.00
Queries per second
28,300.00
20,140.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
1.29
3.42
Average Latency (ms)
3.53
4.96
Maximum Latency (ms)
56.72
21.74
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
6.32
5.88
MySQL INSERT
UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second
4,647.00
6,155.00
Queries per second
46,470.00
61,550.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.61
0.92
Average Latency (ms)
2.15
1.62
Maximum Latency (ms)
28.58
18.45
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
4.41
1.93
MySQL Bulk INSERT
UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second
2,249,592.00
865,805.00
Queries per second
22,495,920.00
8,658,050.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0
0
Average Latency (ms)
0
0.01
Maximum Latency (ms)
207.34
551.87
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
0
0
MySQL SELECT
UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second
645,161.00
128,819.00
Queries per second
6,451,610.00
1,288,190.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.01
0.05
Average Latency (ms)
0.02
0.08
Maximum Latency (ms)
2.26
1.64
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
0.02
0.11
MySQL SELECT (Random Points)
UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second
8,546.00
3,997.00
Queries per second
85,460.00
39,970.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.13
1.06
Average Latency (ms)
1.17
2.5
Maximum Latency (ms)
172.57
6.9
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
1.58
3.36
MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)
UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second
11,562.00
2,438.00
Queries per second
115,620.00
24,380.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.22
0.72
Average Latency (ms)
0.86
4.1
Maximum Latency (ms)
4.07
7.6
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
1.27
5.67
MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)
UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second
4,711.00
5,931.00
Queries per second
47,110.00
59,310.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.73
0.99
Average Latency (ms)
2.12
1.69
Maximum Latency (ms)
30.41
20.58
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
3.96
2.11
MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)
UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second
5,393.00
5,850.00
Queries per second
53,930.00
58,500.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.48
0.99
Average Latency (ms)
1.85
1.71
Maximum Latency (ms)
39
39.87
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
3.43
2.11
MySQL DELETE
UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second
101,195.00
52,741.00
Queries per second
1,011,950.00
527,410.00
Minimum Latency (ms)
0.01
0.05
Average Latency (ms)
0.1
0.19
Maximum Latency (ms)
39.3
18.9
95th Percentile Latency (ms)
0.17
1.3
Redis
UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
PING_INLINE per Second
130,208.34
51,894.13
PING_MBULK per Second
130,208.34
50,968.40
SET per Second
130,890.05
51,599.59
GET per Second
129,198.97
52,770.45
INCR per Second
128,534.70
50,530.57
LPUSH per Second
128,040.97
49,603.17
RPUSH per Second
126,582.27
52,882.07
LPOP per Second
124,688.28
53,050.40
RPOP per Second
127,226.46
52,164.84
SADD per Second
129,198.97
50,556.12
HSET per Second
133,511.34
50,226.02
SPOP per Second
139,275.77
50,864.70
ZADD per Second
130,039.02
50,403.23
ZPOPMIN per Second
129,701.68
49,850.45
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second
55,524.71
26,659.56
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second
28,785.26
12,700.03
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second
18,942.98
8,335.42
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second
17,038.68
7,218.13
MSET (10 keys) per Second
108,225.10
48,239.27
Redis Average Latency (ms)
UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
PING_INLINE
0.25
0.50
PING_MBULK
0.25
0.51
SET
0.26
0.51
GET
0.26
0.49
INCR
0.26
0.51
LPUSH
0.26
0.53
RPUSH
0.27
0.50
LPOP
0.27
0.51
RPOP
0.27
0.50
SADD
0.26
0.52
HSET
0.26
0.52
SPOP
0.24
0.52
ZADD
0.26
0.52
ZPOPMIN
0.26
0.53
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)
0.66
1.05
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)
1.27
2.09
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)
1.95
3.25
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)
2.16
3.76
MSET (10 keys)
0.34
0.81
Conclusion
From the friendly robots:
After analyzing the benchmark performance of the UpCloud Balanced (2 GB) and Vultr Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 cores) instances, it is evident that the Vultr instance outperforms in terms of raw CPU and memory resources, with higher RPS (requests per second) in Redis operations and better throughput metrics. However, the UpCloud instance demonstrates superior performance in certain specific tasks such as CPU and file I/O benchmarks, which are critical for applications that demand high individual task execution speeds. For CPU-intensive and I/O-heavy workloads, UpCloud could be more suitable, whereas Vultr provides a better balance of performance for larger, multi-threaded applications, making it ideal for larger datasets and more concurrent operations.
From the friendly human:
If you found this VPS Showdown helpful in your search for a hosting provider, please consider supporting my efforts by signing up using my referral links for UpCloud and Vultr.