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

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My friend, I'm so glad you're here! Today I spun up fresh 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). Let's get into the numbers.

Overview

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Last Benchmarked Sat, 01 Aug 2026 05:05:17 GMT Sat, 01 Aug 2026 05:09:02 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 $12.00
RAM (GB) 2 2
CPU Cores 1 1
Storage (TB) 50 64
Storage Type SSD NVMe
Transfer (TB) 2 2

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

Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB) takes 4 of 6 categories.

CPU

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 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 3,696.00
CPU Cache Size (KB) 512.00 16,384.00
BogoMips 6,590.84 7,391.99
Events per Second 4,736.09 1,429.28
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.19 0.67
Average Latency (ms) 0.21 0.7
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.23 3.93
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.24 0.8

Memory

Memory Read

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Operations per second 7,122,400.62 7,573,259.47
Mebibytes per second 6,955.47 7,395.76
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.37 0.29
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Operations per second 7,139,007.40 7,520,809.77
Mebibytes per second 6,971.69 7,344.54
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.29 0.33
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Reads per Second 3,511.30 4,743.82
Writes per Second 2,340.87 3,162.54
Fsyncs per Second 7,490.87 10,128.84
Read Mebibytes per Second 54.86 74.12
Written Mebibytes per Second 36.58 49.41
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.07 0.05
Maximum Latency (ms) 29.46 2.43
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.26 0.16

Mutex

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 1,305.60 1,135.02
Average Latency (ms) 1,313.28 1,145.46
Maximum Latency (ms) 1,319.54 1,150.95
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1,327.91 1,149.76

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 15,488.00 10,014.00
Queries per second 154,880.00 100,140.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.44 0.91
Average Latency (ms) 0.64 1
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.13 2.96
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.77 1.14

MySQL Write-only

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 5,617.00 11,181.00
Queries per second 56,170.00 111,810.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.87 0.58
Average Latency (ms) 1.78 0.89
Maximum Latency (ms) 47.05 7.24
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.81 1.16

MySQL Read/Write

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 3,612.00 4,056.00
Queries per second 36,120.00 40,560.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.68 1.7
Average Latency (ms) 2.76 2.46
Maximum Latency (ms) 29.34 19.4
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.96 3.82

MySQL INSERT

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 8,793.00 20,663.00
Queries per second 87,930.00 206,630.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.53 0.32
Average Latency (ms) 1.13 0.48
Maximum Latency (ms) 33.56 5.62
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.79 0.64

MySQL Bulk INSERT

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 2,016,592.00 1,870,967.00
Queries per second 20,165,920.00 18,709,670.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 214.98 227.33
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 421,834.00 229,513.00
Queries per second 4,218,340.00 2,295,130.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.02 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.02 0.04
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.13 1.03
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.03 0.05

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 8,876.00 7,697.00
Queries per second 88,760.00 76,970.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.3 0.42
Average Latency (ms) 1.13 1.3
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.11 4.34
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.55 1.67

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 14,529.00 10,600.00
Queries per second 145,290.00 106,000.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.2 0.37
Average Latency (ms) 0.69 0.94
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.02 2.67
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.99 1.25

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 7,318.00 19,067.00
Queries per second 73,180.00 190,670.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.57 0.32
Average Latency (ms) 1.36 0.52
Maximum Latency (ms) 38.29 3.86
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.14 0.73

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 8,495.00 20,161.00
Queries per second 84,950.00 201,610.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.57 0.32
Average Latency (ms) 1.18 0.5
Maximum Latency (ms) 20.17 11.21
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.86 0.67

MySQL DELETE

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 150,571.00 155,087.00
Queries per second 1,505,710.00 1,550,870.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.02 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.07 0.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 73.25 3.89
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.08 0.09

Redis

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 51,626.23 57,937.43
PING_MBULK per Second 51,203.28 57,670.13
SET per Second 51,786.64 60,096.15
GET per Second 52,356.02 60,938.45
INCR per Second 52,882.07 58,105.75
LPUSH per Second 53,390.28 59,453.03
RPUSH per Second 50,479.56 60,827.25
LPOP per Second 54,318.30 60,864.27
RPOP per Second 52,603.89 61,312.08
SADD per Second 51,679.59 59,066.75
HSET per Second 49,091.80 59,066.75
SPOP per Second 47,169.81 59,276.82
ZADD per Second 50,505.05 58,105.75
ZPOPMIN per Second 50,890.59 59,594.76
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 38,080.73 38,986.36
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 24,125.45 22,753.13
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 18,611.58 15,583.61
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 16,837.85 14,130.28
MSET (10 keys) per Second 49,578.58 54,674.69

Redis Average Latency (ms)

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB)
PING_INLINE0.570.52
PING_MBULK0.570.51
SET0.590.51
GET0.570.49
INCR0.570.51
LPUSH0.570.51
RPUSH0.600.50
LPOP0.570.51
RPOP0.590.50
SADD0.580.51
HSET0.620.51
SPOP0.630.50
ZADD0.610.52
ZPOPMIN0.580.50
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.830.81
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.351.44
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)1.722.06
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)1.902.35
MSET (10 keys)0.730.59

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The Vultr High Frequency Intel instance benchmarks superior in Redis operations with higher RPS rates, like SET (60096.15 vs 51786.64) and GET (60938.45 vs 52356.02), and in MySQL bulk insert (184521.71 vs 198300.13 TPS). Vultr’s CPU outperforms in raw performance metrics, evident in higher events per second (1429.28 vs 4736.09), making it more suitable for CPU-intensive tasks, while UpCloud’s slightly better file I/O operations may appeal to I/O-heavy workloads.

From the friendly human:

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Providers & pricing

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

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