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

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New day, new benchmarks. Today I spun up fresh instances from UpCloud and Vultr and did some benchmarking. All instances were running 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 (2 GB)
Last Benchmarked Sat, 01 Aug 2026 05:05:17 GMT Sat, 01 Aug 2026 05:13:32 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 50
Storage Type SSD NVMe
Transfer (TB) 2 3

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 (2 GB)
MySQL (read/write tps)Tie
Redis (GET/sec)UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)
Value (CPU events per $/mo)UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB)

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) takes 4 of 6 categories.

CPU

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Vendor AuthenticAMD GenuineIntel
Model Name AMD EPYC 9575F 64-Core Processor Intel Xeon Processor (Cascadelake)
Clock Speed (MHz) 3,295.42 2,893.21
CPU Cache Size (KB) 512.00 16,384.00
BogoMips 6,590.84 5,786.41
Events per Second 4,736.09 999.67
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.19 0.9
Average Latency (ms) 0.21 1
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.23 2.64
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.24 1.23

Memory

Memory Read

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Operations per second 7,122,400.62 4,899,364.23
Mebibytes per second 6,955.47 4,784.54
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.37 0.71
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Operations per second 7,139,007.40 4,958,374.18
Mebibytes per second 6,971.69 4,842.16
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.29 1.78
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Reads per Second 3,511.30 3,921.65
Writes per Second 2,340.87 2,614.43
Fsyncs per Second 7,490.87 8,376.78
Read Mebibytes per Second 54.86 61.28
Written Mebibytes per Second 36.58 40.85
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.07 0.07
Maximum Latency (ms) 29.46 5.7
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.26 0.2

Mutex

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 1,305.60 1,859.93
Average Latency (ms) 1,313.28 1,885.81
Maximum Latency (ms) 1,319.54 1,898.27
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1,327.91 1,903.57

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 15,488.00 9,027.00
Queries per second 154,880.00 90,270.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.44 0.96
Average Latency (ms) 0.64 1.11
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.13 2.56
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.77 1.44

MySQL Write-only

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 5,617.00 8,431.00
Queries per second 56,170.00 84,310.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.87 0.75
Average Latency (ms) 1.78 1.18
Maximum Latency (ms) 47.05 9.18
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.81 1.76

MySQL Read/Write

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 3,612.00 3,610.00
Queries per second 36,120.00 36,100.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.68 2
Average Latency (ms) 2.76 2.77
Maximum Latency (ms) 29.34 15.04
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.96 3.75

MySQL INSERT

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 8,793.00 14,727.00
Queries per second 87,930.00 147,270.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.53 0.42
Average Latency (ms) 1.13 0.68
Maximum Latency (ms) 33.56 4.61
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.79 0.94

MySQL Bulk INSERT

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 2,016,592.00 1,201,092.00
Queries per second 20,165,920.00 12,010,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 214.98 387.67
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 421,834.00 228,161.00
Queries per second 4,218,340.00 2,281,610.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.02 0.03
Average Latency (ms) 0.02 0.04
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.13 1.57
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.03 0.06

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 8,876.00 4,700.00
Queries per second 88,760.00 47,000.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.3 0.78
Average Latency (ms) 1.13 2.12
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.11 9.85
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.55 3.3

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 14,529.00 7,069.00
Queries per second 145,290.00 70,690.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.2 0.37
Average Latency (ms) 0.69 1.41
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.02 4.39
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.99 2.26

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 7,318.00 15,156.00
Queries per second 73,180.00 151,560.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.57 0.41
Average Latency (ms) 1.36 0.66
Maximum Latency (ms) 38.29 5.49
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.14 0.95

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 8,495.00 15,180.00
Queries per second 84,950.00 151,800.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.57 0.41
Average Latency (ms) 1.18 0.66
Maximum Latency (ms) 20.17 3.82
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.86 0.9

MySQL DELETE

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 150,571.00 149,333.00
Queries per second 1,505,710.00 1,493,330.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.02 0.03
Average Latency (ms) 0.07 0.07
Maximum Latency (ms) 73.25 2.9
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.08 0.12

Redis

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 51,626.23 45,998.16
PING_MBULK per Second 51,203.28 59,916.12
SET per Second 51,786.64 57,438.25
GET per Second 52,356.02 50,581.69
INCR per Second 52,882.07 57,240.98
LPUSH per Second 53,390.28 57,306.59
RPUSH per Second 50,479.56 52,631.58
LPOP per Second 54,318.30 52,854.12
RPOP per Second 52,603.89 54,794.52
SADD per Second 51,679.59 59,382.42
HSET per Second 49,091.80 57,636.89
SPOP per Second 47,169.81 54,854.64
ZADD per Second 50,505.05 58,892.82
ZPOPMIN per Second 50,890.59 65,189.05
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 38,080.73 35,075.41
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 24,125.45 14,297.97
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 18,611.58 10,139.93
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 16,837.85 8,959.77
MSET (10 keys) per Second 49,578.58 50,761.42

Redis Average Latency (ms)

UpCloud – Balanced (2 GB) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
PING_INLINE0.570.70
PING_MBULK0.570.53
SET0.590.56
GET0.570.65
INCR0.570.56
LPUSH0.570.56
RPUSH0.600.61
LPOP0.570.62
RPOP0.590.60
SADD0.580.54
HSET0.620.56
SPOP0.630.58
ZADD0.610.55
ZPOPMIN0.580.48
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.830.95
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.352.25
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)1.723.16
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)1.903.47
MSET (10 keys)0.730.79

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

Based on the benchmark results, the UpCloud Balanced (2 GB) instance performs better overall, especially in Redis commands where it achieves notably higher requests per second (rps) and lower latency compared to the Vultr High Performance Intel (2 GB) instance. For example, UpCloud handles up to 52,356 GET requests per second with an average latency of 0.57 ms, while Vultr only reaches 50,582 GETs per second with a higher average latency of 0.65 ms. This makes the UpCloud instance more suitable for CPU-intensive applications and those requiring high throughput and low latency, such as real-time data processing and high-frequency trading systems, while also offering a good balance between cost and performance.

From the friendly human:

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Providers & pricing

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

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