UpCloud Balanced (2 GB) vs. Vultr High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)

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Welcome to another round of the VPS Showdown. Today I've spun up some brand new instance from UpCloud and Vultr and ran some benchmarks. Each instance was running Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and all resided in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Let's get into the numbers.

Overview

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Last Benchmarked Wed, 13 May 2026 07:00:52 GMT Sun, 10 May 2026 19:00:52 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 $24.00
RAM (GB) 2 4
CPU Cores 1 2
Storage (TB) 50 100
Storage Type SSD NVMe
Transfer (TB) 2 5

CPU

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Vendor AuthenticAMD AuthenticAMD
Model Name AMD EPYC 9575F 64-Core Processor AMD EPYC-Genoa Processor
Clock Speed (MHz) 3,295.48 2,899.97
CPU Cache Size (KB) 512.00 1,024.00
BogoMips 6,590.95 5,799.93
Events per Second 5,025.21 4,658.11
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.18 0.21
Average Latency (ms) 0.2 0.21
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.35 0.53
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.22 0.23

Memory

Memory Read

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Operations per second 5,932,400.60 7,575,653.76
Mebibytes per second 5,793.36 7,398.10
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.22 0.11
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Operations per second 6,706,599.41 7,568,193.98
Mebibytes per second 6,549.41 7,390.81
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.56 0.12
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Reads per Second 3,214.64 7,987.51
Writes per Second 2,143.03 5,325.00
Fsyncs per Second 6,864.71 17,048.51
Read Mebibytes per Second 50.23 124.80
Written Mebibytes per Second 33.48 83.20
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.08 0.03
Maximum Latency (ms) 20.14 6.39
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.31 0.1

Mutex

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Minimum Latency (ms) 1,349.13 486.79
Average Latency (ms) 1,353.60 633.21
Maximum Latency (ms) 1,361.99 662.57
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1,352.03 657.93

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 19,090.00 10,078.00
Queries per second 190,900.00 100,780.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.31 0.73
Average Latency (ms) 0.52 0.99
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.34 2.1
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.64 1.04

MySQL Write-only

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 3,974.00 9,972.00
Queries per second 39,740.00 99,720.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.87 0.69
Average Latency (ms) 2.51 1
Maximum Latency (ms) 38.67 2.46
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5 1.27

MySQL Read/Write

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 2,830.00 4,931.00
Queries per second 28,300.00 49,310.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.29 1.69
Average Latency (ms) 3.53 2.03
Maximum Latency (ms) 56.72 4.6
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 6.32 2.35

MySQL INSERT

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 4,647.00 16,374.00
Queries per second 46,470.00 163,740.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.61 0.45
Average Latency (ms) 2.15 0.61
Maximum Latency (ms) 28.58 2.27
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.41 0.73

MySQL Bulk INSERT

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 2,249,592.00 3,065,092.00
Queries per second 22,495,920.00 30,650,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 207.34 202.5
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 645,161.00 228,801.00
Queries per second 6,451,610.00 2,288,010.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.01 0.02
Average Latency (ms) 0.02 0.04
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.26 0.76
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.02 0.05

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 8,546.00 14,971.00
Queries per second 85,460.00 149,710.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.13 0.24
Average Latency (ms) 1.17 0.67
Maximum Latency (ms) 172.57 2.18
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.58 0.84

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 11,562.00 14,347.00
Queries per second 115,620.00 143,470.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.22 0.22
Average Latency (ms) 0.86 0.7
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.07 1.42
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.27 0.89

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 4,711.00 15,756.00
Queries per second 47,110.00 157,560.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.73 0.46
Average Latency (ms) 2.12 0.63
Maximum Latency (ms) 30.41 2.03
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.96 0.83

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 5,393.00 16,201.00
Queries per second 53,930.00 162,010.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.48 0.45
Average Latency (ms) 1.85 0.62
Maximum Latency (ms) 39 1.59
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.43 0.77

MySQL DELETE

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 101,195.00 163,015.00
Queries per second 1,011,950.00 1,630,150.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.01 0.02
Average Latency (ms) 0.1 0.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 39.3 3.17
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.17 0.08

Redis

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
PING_INLINE per Second 130,208.34 57,372.34
PING_MBULK per Second 130,208.34 58,719.91
SET per Second 130,890.05 59,276.82
GET per Second 129,198.97 59,031.88
INCR per Second 128,534.70 59,136.61
LPUSH per Second 128,040.97 58,616.65
RPUSH per Second 126,582.27 58,754.41
LPOP per Second 124,688.28 58,962.27
RPOP per Second 127,226.46 59,241.71
SADD per Second 129,198.97 58,892.82
HSET per Second 133,511.34 58,616.65
SPOP per Second 139,275.77 59,206.63
ZADD per Second 130,039.02 59,031.88
ZPOPMIN per Second 129,701.68 59,311.98
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 55,524.71 50,479.56
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 28,785.26 34,164.67
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 18,942.98 26,364.36
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 17,038.68 23,952.09
MSET (10 keys) per Second 108,225.10 59,031.88

Redis Average Latency (ms)

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores)
PING_INLINE0.250.46
PING_MBULK0.250.44
SET0.260.44
GET0.260.44
INCR0.260.43
LPUSH0.260.44
RPUSH0.270.44
LPOP0.270.44
RPOP0.270.43
SADD0.260.44
HSET0.260.44
SPOP0.240.43
ZADD0.260.44
ZPOPMIN0.260.43
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.660.51
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.270.75
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)1.950.96
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)2.161.06
MSET (10 keys)0.340.44

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The UpCloud Balanced (2 GB) instance performs notably better in high-throughput Redis benchmarks with higher requests per second and lower average latencies compared to the Vultr High Performance AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) instance. The UpCloud instance also excels in CPU performance and file I/O operations, showing stronger performance across a broad range of metrics. However, the Vultr instance offers slightly better MySQL bulk insert operations and overall memory performance, while having competitive Redis and MySQL general performance metrics. Therefore, UpCloud would be ideal for CPU-intensive and I/O-heavy workloads, while Vultr might be more suitable for configurations requiring higher RAM and still needing strong overall performance, particularly for applications that benefit from multiple CPU cores.

From the friendly human:

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