UpCloud Balanced (4 GB, 2 Cores) vs. Vultr Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)

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New day, new benchmarks. Today I've spun up brand new instance from UpCloud and Vultr and ran my world famous suite of benchmarking scripts. Each instance was running Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and all resided in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Without further ado, here's the results.

Overview

UpCloud – Balanced (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Last Benchmarked Sat, 23 May 2026 12:00:52 GMT Sat, 23 May 2026 11:00:52 GMT
Linux Distro Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version 6.8.0-111-generic 6.8.0-117-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 €26.00 $40.00
RAM (GB) 4 8
CPU Cores 2 4
Storage (TB) 80 160
Storage Type SSD SSD
Transfer (TB) 4 4

CPU

UpCloud – Balanced (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Vendor AuthenticAMD GenuineIntel
Model Name AMD EPYC 9575F 64-Core Processor Intel Xeon Processor (Skylake, IBRS)
Clock Speed (MHz) 3,295.48 2,593.90
CPU Cache Size (KB) 512.00 16,384.00
BogoMips 6,590.95 5,187.80
Events per Second 5,107.54 1,100.82
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.18 0.88
Average Latency (ms) 0.2 0.91
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.12 1.56
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.21 0.97

Memory

Memory Read

UpCloud – Balanced (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Operations per second 7,048,344.15 3,685,781.23
Mebibytes per second 6,883.15 3,599.40
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.98 1.03
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

UpCloud – Balanced (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Operations per second 6,718,758.28 3,590,629.63
Mebibytes per second 6,561.29 3,506.47
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.45 1.16
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

UpCloud – Balanced (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Reads per Second 3,550.20 4,999.39
Writes per Second 2,366.80 3,332.93
Fsyncs per Second 7,582.36 10,670.47
Read Mebibytes per Second 55.47 78.12
Written Mebibytes per Second 36.98 52.08
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.07 0.05
Maximum Latency (ms) 26.81 37.52
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.28 0.18

Mutex

UpCloud – Balanced (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Minimum Latency (ms) 505.91 369.37
Average Latency (ms) 563.11 416.22
Maximum Latency (ms) 589.47 441.77
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 590.56 442.73

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

UpCloud – Balanced (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 15,631.00 5,144.00
Queries per second 156,310.00 51,440.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.33 1.72
Average Latency (ms) 0.64 1.94
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.07 7.67
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.84 2.35

MySQL Write-only

UpCloud – Balanced (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 3,293.00 5,108.00
Queries per second 32,930.00 51,080.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.84 1.15
Average Latency (ms) 3.03 1.96
Maximum Latency (ms) 65.91 12.52
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 7.04 2.71

MySQL Read/Write

UpCloud – Balanced (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 2,215.00 2,247.00
Queries per second 22,150.00 22,470.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.72 3.08
Average Latency (ms) 4.51 4.45
Maximum Latency (ms) 25.84 29.7
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 9.56 5.28

MySQL INSERT

UpCloud – Balanced (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 4,791.00 7,630.00
Queries per second 47,910.00 76,300.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.51 0.71
Average Latency (ms) 2.08 1.31
Maximum Latency (ms) 34.39 29.81
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.74 1.55

MySQL Bulk INSERT

UpCloud – Balanced (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 2,540,842.00 898,571.00
Queries per second 25,408,420.00 8,985,710.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 195.07 505.86
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

UpCloud – Balanced (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 501,795.00 149,465.00
Queries per second 5,017,950.00 1,494,650.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.01 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.02 0.07
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.92 1.22
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.03 0.09

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

UpCloud – Balanced (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 9,955.00 4,249.00
Queries per second 99,550.00 42,490.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.17 0.83
Average Latency (ms) 1 2.35
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.74 6.6
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.55 3.02

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

UpCloud – Balanced (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 11,074.00 2,637.00
Queries per second 110,740.00 26,370.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.23 0.94
Average Latency (ms) 0.9 3.79
Maximum Latency (ms) 28.81 6.3
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.64 5.09

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

UpCloud – Balanced (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 4,197.00 7,166.00
Queries per second 41,970.00 71,660.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.82 0.7
Average Latency (ms) 2.38 1.39
Maximum Latency (ms) 20.12 28.84
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.91 1.79

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

UpCloud – Balanced (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 4,240.00 7,661.00
Queries per second 42,400.00 76,610.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.91 0.7
Average Latency (ms) 2.36 1.3
Maximum Latency (ms) 23.25 33.97
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.82 1.58

MySQL DELETE

UpCloud – Balanced (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 147,595.00 69,690.00
Queries per second 1,475,950.00 696,900.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.01 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.07 0.14
Maximum Latency (ms) 21.57 27.73
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.1 0.87

Redis

UpCloud – Balanced (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
PING_INLINE per Second 157,728.70 54,436.58
PING_MBULK per Second 200,000.00 48,828.12
SET per Second 230,414.75 51,572.98
GET per Second 206,185.56 48,239.27
INCR per Second 147,929.00 52,328.62
LPUSH per Second 194,174.77 45,454.54
RPUSH per Second 215,517.25 49,751.24
LPOP per Second 208,768.27 53,390.28
RPOP per Second 220,750.55 53,648.07
SADD per Second 242,130.77 48,285.85
HSET per Second 218,340.61 51,493.30
SPOP per Second 223,713.64 52,910.05
ZADD per Second 223,713.64 53,504.55
ZPOPMIN per Second 228,310.50 53,590.57
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 130,548.30 28,645.09
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 51,759.83 13,131.98
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 32,873.11 8,529.51
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 27,337.34 7,479.99
MSET (10 keys) per Second 215,517.25 49,212.60

Redis Average Latency (ms)

UpCloud – Balanced (4 GB, 2 Cores) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
PING_INLINE0.190.47
PING_MBULK0.140.53
SET0.120.50
GET0.130.54
INCR0.180.49
LPUSH0.140.58
RPUSH0.130.52
LPOP0.130.49
RPOP0.120.48
SADD0.110.54
HSET0.120.53
SPOP0.120.49
ZADD0.120.48
ZPOPMIN0.110.48
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.250.91
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)0.531.94
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)0.893.00
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)1.163.43
MSET (10 keys)0.170.77

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

Both VPS instances show promising performance for different workloads. The UpCloud instance with 2 CPUs and 4 GB RAM delivers impressive Redis throughput and low latencies for most commands, making it ideal for I/O-intensive applications requiring high concurrency and low latency. The Vultr instance with 4 CPUs and 8 GB RAM excels in CPU-bound tasks, with superior OLTP and bulk insert performance in MySQL benchmarks, coupled with lower latency in Redis operations compared to UpCloud. Given the configurations, UpCloud is better suited for high concurrency tasks with moderate CPU demand, while Vultr shines in CPU-intensive workloads, making it suitable for applications needing more robust processing power.

From the friendly human:

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