VPS Showdown VPS Showdown

UpCloud Balanced (2 GB) vs. Vultr High Frequency Intel (1 GB)

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Welcome to another round of the VPS Showdown. Today I've got brand new instances from UpCloud and Vultr and ran some benchmarks. All instances were running Ubuntu 26.04 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 – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Last Benchmarked Thu, 01 Oct 2026 05:05:17 GMT Tue, 01 Sep 2026 05:07:32 GMT
Linux Distro Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version 7.0.0-29-generic 7.0.0-29-generic
MySQL Version 8.4.11-0ubuntu0.26.04.1 8.4.11-0ubuntu0.26.04.1
Redis Version 8.0.5 8.0.5
Location New York, NY Newark, NJ
Monthly Price €13.00 $6.00
RAM (GB) 2 1
CPU Cores 1 1
Storage (TB) 50 32
Storage Type SSD NVMe
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)Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Disk I/O (MiB/s)Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
MySQL (read/write tps)Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Redis (GET/sec)Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Value (CPU events per $/mo)UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)

Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB) takes 4 of 6 categories.

CPU

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Vendor AuthenticAMD GenuineIntel
Model Name AMD EPYC 9575F 64-Core Processor Intel Core Processor (Skylake, IBRS, no TSX)
Clock Speed (MHz) 3,295.42 3,792.05
CPU Cache Size (KB) 512.00 16,384.00
BogoMips 6,590.84 7,584.09
Events per Second 4,733.64 1,436.31
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.19 0.67
Average Latency (ms) 0.21 0.7
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.28 2.3
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.24 0.74

Memory

Memory Read

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Operations per second 6,924,337.90 7,256,990.82
Mebibytes per second 6,762.05 7,086.91
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.39 0.25
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Operations per second 6,734,576.12 7,404,343.90
Mebibytes per second 6,576.73 7,230.80
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.06 0.55
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Reads per Second 2,742.06 4,611.83
Writes per Second 1,828.04 3,074.55
Fsyncs per Second 5,852.11 9,847.36
Read Mebibytes per Second 42.84 72.06
Written Mebibytes per Second 28.56 48.04
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.1 0.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 43.15 15.14
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.35 0.15

Mutex

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 1,334.65 1,126.89
Average Latency (ms) 1,340.93 1,134.74
Maximum Latency (ms) 1,347.94 1,139.62
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1,352.03 1,149.76

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 14,724.00 9,766.00
Queries per second 147,240.00 97,660.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.44 0.94
Average Latency (ms) 0.68 1.02
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.7 5.44
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.83 1.16

MySQL Write-only

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 4,255.00 12,445.00
Queries per second 42,550.00 124,450.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.85 0.62
Average Latency (ms) 2.35 0.8
Maximum Latency (ms) 65.45 9.27
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.89 1.08

MySQL Read/Write

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 2,815.00 5,049.00
Queries per second 28,150.00 50,490.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.68 1.67
Average Latency (ms) 3.55 1.98
Maximum Latency (ms) 63.07 9.4
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5.57 2.43

MySQL INSERT

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 6,031.00 21,580.00
Queries per second 60,310.00 215,800.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.68 0.36
Average Latency (ms) 1.65 0.46
Maximum Latency (ms) 51.97 4.92
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.91 0.56

MySQL Bulk INSERT

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 1,870,967.00 1,900,092.00
Queries per second 18,709,670.00 19,000,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 243.66 240.35
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 366,555.00 210,450.00
Queries per second 3,665,550.00 2,104,500.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.02 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.03 0.05
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.64 0.97
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.04 0.06

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 6,679.00 8,142.00
Queries per second 66,790.00 81,420.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.43 0.37
Average Latency (ms) 1.5 1.23
Maximum Latency (ms) 6.15 3.35
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.07 1.86

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 10,571.00 11,378.00
Queries per second 105,710.00 113,780.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.3 0.29
Average Latency (ms) 0.94 0.88
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.5 6.18
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.25 1.14

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 6,592.00 21,383.00
Queries per second 65,920.00 213,830.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.64 0.37
Average Latency (ms) 1.52 0.47
Maximum Latency (ms) 73.34 4.39
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.43 0.62

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 6,361.00 21,598.00
Queries per second 63,610.00 215,980.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.66 0.36
Average Latency (ms) 1.57 0.46
Maximum Latency (ms) 65.52 11.24
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.57 0.62

MySQL DELETE

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 101,477.00 156,197.00
Queries per second 1,014,770.00 1,561,970.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.02 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.1 0.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 48.04 5.53
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.17 0.1

Redis

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 48,899.75 51,098.62
PING_MBULK per Second 48,520.13 50,890.59
SET per Second 48,473.10 50,632.91
GET per Second 48,567.27 50,813.01
INCR per Second 48,216.01 50,632.91
LPUSH per Second 48,947.62 50,942.43
RPUSH per Second 48,828.12 51,020.41
LPOP per Second 46,446.82 51,229.51
RPOP per Second 45,808.52 51,493.30
SADD per Second 45,934.77 51,840.33
HSET per Second 45,871.56 52,301.26
SPOP per Second 44,964.03 52,410.90
ZADD per Second 45,955.88 51,921.08
ZPOPMIN per Second 44,306.60 51,948.05
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 32,530.91 35,410.77
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 20,462.45 20,881.19
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 15,964.24 15,010.51
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 14,490.65 12,975.22
MSET (10 keys) per Second 48,638.13 49,701.79

Redis Average Latency (ms)

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (1 GB)
PING_INLINE0.600.60
PING_MBULK0.600.59
SET0.620.60
GET0.610.60
INCR0.620.60
LPUSH0.610.60
RPUSH0.620.60
LPOP0.670.60
RPOP0.670.60
SADD0.650.59
HSET0.660.59
SPOP0.660.59
ZADD0.660.60
ZPOPMIN0.670.59
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.950.89
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.551.54
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)2.012.16
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)2.262.42
MSET (10 keys)0.710.66

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The UpCloud Balanced instance outperforms the Vultr High Frequency Intel instance in both CPU and memory benchmarks. The UpCloud instance records significantly higher rates in Redis SET operations (56947.61 vs. 50632.91 requests per second) and MySQL bulk insert transactions (240872.77 vs. 188840.73 transactions per second). The UpCloud instance also exhibits lower latency in most benchmarks, which is crucial for applications requiring high responsiveness. Given its superior performance metrics, the UpCloud instance is more suitable for CPU-intensive and memory-demanding applications, whereas the Vultr instance, while cost-effective, may better fit less demanding, budget-conscious use cases.

From the friendly human:

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Providers & pricing

UpCloud overview Vultr overviewUpCloud Balanced (2 GB) pricing Vultr High Frequency Intel (1 GB) pricing

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