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

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New day, new benchmarks. Today I've got brand new instances from UpCloud and Vultr and ran my world famous suite of benchmarking scripts. All instances were spun up with Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 and all resided in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Time to see who showed up today.

Overview

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Last Benchmarked Sat, 01 Aug 2026 05:05:17 GMT Sat, 01 Aug 2026 05:12:47 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 $6.00
RAM (GB) 2 1
CPU Cores 1 1
Storage (TB) 50 25
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)UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Disk I/O (MiB/s)Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
MySQL (read/write tps)Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Redis (GET/sec)Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Value (CPU events per $/mo)UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)

Evenly matched across 6 categories.

CPU

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Vendor AuthenticAMD GenuineIntel
Model Name AMD EPYC 9575F 64-Core Processor Intel Xeon Processor (Cascadelake)
Clock Speed (MHz) 3,295.42 2,992.91
CPU Cache Size (KB) 512.00 16,384.00
BogoMips 6,590.84 5,985.82
Events per Second 4,736.09 1,085.49
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.19 0.87
Average Latency (ms) 0.21 0.92
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.23 1.53
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.24 1.04

Memory

Memory Read

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Operations per second 7,122,400.62 5,287,233.83
Mebibytes per second 6,955.47 5,163.31
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.37 0.53
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Operations per second 7,139,007.40 5,446,064.29
Mebibytes per second 6,971.69 5,318.42
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.29 0.39
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Reads per Second 3,511.30 3,945.14
Writes per Second 2,340.87 2,630.10
Fsyncs per Second 7,490.87 8,418.81
Read Mebibytes per Second 54.86 61.64
Written Mebibytes per Second 36.58 41.10
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.07 0.07
Maximum Latency (ms) 29.46 2.96
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.26 0.2

Mutex

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 1,305.60 1,674.69
Average Latency (ms) 1,313.28 1,689.62
Maximum Latency (ms) 1,319.54 1,697.70
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1,327.91 1,708.63

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 15,488.00 9,332.00
Queries per second 154,880.00 93,320.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.44 0.93
Average Latency (ms) 0.64 1.07
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.13 15.52
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.77 1.32

MySQL Write-only

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 5,617.00 11,031.00
Queries per second 56,170.00 110,310.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.87 0.69
Average Latency (ms) 1.78 0.9
Maximum Latency (ms) 47.05 11.47
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.81 1.23

MySQL Read/Write

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 3,612.00 4,749.00
Queries per second 36,120.00 47,490.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.68 1.79
Average Latency (ms) 2.76 2.1
Maximum Latency (ms) 29.34 7.52
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.96 2.57

MySQL INSERT

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 8,793.00 18,923.00
Queries per second 87,930.00 189,230.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.53 0.39
Average Latency (ms) 1.13 0.53
Maximum Latency (ms) 33.56 10.45
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.79 0.68

MySQL Bulk INSERT

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 2,016,592.00 1,375,842.00
Queries per second 20,165,920.00 13,758,420.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 214.98 345.61
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 421,834.00 263,886.00
Queries per second 4,218,340.00 2,638,860.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.02 0.03
Average Latency (ms) 0.02 0.04
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.13 2.47
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.03 0.05

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 8,876.00 6,167.00
Queries per second 88,760.00 61,670.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.3 0.53
Average Latency (ms) 1.13 1.62
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.11 6.42
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.55 2.11

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 14,529.00 8,650.00
Queries per second 145,290.00 86,500.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.2 0.43
Average Latency (ms) 0.69 1.15
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.02 3.4
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.99 1.52

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 7,318.00 18,825.00
Queries per second 73,180.00 188,250.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.57 0.4
Average Latency (ms) 1.36 0.53
Maximum Latency (ms) 38.29 5.88
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.14 0.69

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 8,495.00 19,241.00
Queries per second 84,950.00 192,410.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.57 0.39
Average Latency (ms) 1.18 0.52
Maximum Latency (ms) 20.17 4.64
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.86 0.65

MySQL DELETE

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
Transactions per second 150,571.00 200,203.00
Queries per second 1,505,710.00 2,002,030.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.02 0.03
Average Latency (ms) 0.07 0.05
Maximum Latency (ms) 73.25 3.61
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.08 0.08

Redis

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 51,626.23 70,472.16
PING_MBULK per Second 51,203.28 75,187.97
SET per Second 51,786.64 73,909.83
GET per Second 52,356.02 69,156.30
INCR per Second 52,882.07 59,952.04
LPUSH per Second 53,390.28 52,576.24
RPUSH per Second 50,479.56 68,634.18
LPOP per Second 54,318.30 59,171.59
RPOP per Second 52,603.89 53,219.80
SADD per Second 51,679.59 67,430.88
HSET per Second 49,091.80 63,734.86
SPOP per Second 47,169.81 43,859.65
ZADD per Second 50,505.05 43,365.13
ZPOPMIN per Second 50,890.59 49,285.36
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 38,080.73 36,982.25
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 24,125.45 19,992.00
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 18,611.58 12,827.09
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 16,837.85 10,901.56
MSET (10 keys) per Second 49,578.58 64,350.06

Redis Average Latency (ms)

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (1 GB)
PING_INLINE0.570.45
PING_MBULK0.570.42
SET0.590.44
GET0.570.46
INCR0.570.53
LPUSH0.570.61
RPUSH0.600.47
LPOP0.570.55
RPOP0.590.62
SADD0.580.47
HSET0.620.51
SPOP0.630.72
ZADD0.610.75
ZPOPMIN0.580.64
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.830.90
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.351.61
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)1.722.58
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)1.902.88
MSET (10 keys)0.730.61

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

Based on the benchmark results, the Vultr High Performance Intel instance wins overall for its superior performance metrics. Notably, the Vultr instance shows higher Redis performance with an RPS of 75187.97 for PING_MBULK compared to UpCloud's 51203.28, and it excels in MySQL bulk insert operations with a TPS of 133394.61 against UpCloud's 198300.13. While UpCloud provides better file I/O performance, Vultr's higher CPU, memory, and Redis throughput makes it more suitable for CPU-intensive and high-traffic applications, offering a better balance between price and performance for such use cases.

From the friendly human:

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Providers & pricing

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

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