How much does UpCloud Balanced (8 GB, 4 Cores) cost per month?

UpCloud Balanced (8 GB, 4 Cores) is €52.00/mo and includes 4 vCPU, 8 GB RAM, 160 GB SSD of storage, and 5 TB of transfer.

How much does Vultr High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) cost per month?

Vultr High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) is $18.00/mo and includes 2 vCPU, 2 GB RAM, 80 GB NVMe of storage, and 3 TB of transfer.

What are the specs of UpCloud Balanced (8 GB, 4 Cores)?

UpCloud Balanced (8 GB, 4 Cores) has 4 vCPU, 8 GB RAM, 160 GB SSD of storage, and 5 TB of monthly transfer for €52.00/mo.

UpCloud Balanced 8 GB, 4 Cores (€52/mo) vs. Vultr High Frequency Intel 2 GB, 2 Cores ($18/mo) Benchmarks

Same showdown, different day. Today I've spun up some brand new instance from UpCloud and Vultr and did some benchmarking. All instances were running Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and all resided in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Enough talk. Here's the data.

Overview

	UpCloud – Balanced (8 GB, 4 Cores)	Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Last Benchmarked	Sun, 31 May 2026 19:00:52 GMT	Sun, 31 May 2026 13:00:55 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	€52.00	$18.00
RAM (GB)	8	2
CPU Cores	4	2
Storage (TB)	160	80
Storage Type	SSD	NVMe
Transfer (TB)	5	3

CPU

	UpCloud – Balanced (8 GB, 4 Cores)	Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Vendor	AuthenticAMD	GenuineIntel
Model Name	AMD EPYC 9575F 64-Core Processor	Intel Core Processor (Skylake, IBRS, no TSX)
Clock Speed (MHz)	3,295.46	3,791.98
CPU Cache Size (KB)	512.00	16,384.00
BogoMips	6,590.91	7,583.95
Events per Second	5,628.46	1,552.05
Minimum Latency (ms)	0.16	0.62
Average Latency (ms)	0.18	0.64
Maximum Latency (ms)	0.31	4.61
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	0.19	0.69

Memory Read

	UpCloud – Balanced (8 GB, 4 Cores)	Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Operations per second	7,929,659.23	7,875,668.83
Mebibytes per second	7,743.81	7,691.08
Minimum Latency (ms)	0	0
Average Latency (ms)	0	0
Maximum Latency (ms)	0.17	0.12
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	0	0

Memory Write

	UpCloud – Balanced (8 GB, 4 Cores)	Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Operations per second	7,814,821.77	7,729,812.11
Mebibytes per second	7,631.66	7,548.64
Minimum Latency (ms)	0	0
Average Latency (ms)	0	0
Maximum Latency (ms)	0.1	0.16
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	0	0

File I/O

	UpCloud – Balanced (8 GB, 4 Cores)	Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Reads per Second	7,270.40	4,671.85
Writes per Second	4,846.94	3,114.56
Fsyncs per Second	15,522.49	9,976.90
Read Mebibytes per Second	113.60	73.00
Written Mebibytes per Second	75.73	48.67
Minimum Latency (ms)	0	0
Average Latency (ms)	0.04	0.06
Maximum Latency (ms)	16.66	2.76
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	0.19	0.17

Mutex

	UpCloud – Balanced (8 GB, 4 Cores)	Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Minimum Latency (ms)	235.51	543.27
Average Latency (ms)	282.02	554.74
Maximum Latency (ms)	313.16	563.70
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	314.45	559.50

MySQL Read-only

	UpCloud – Balanced (8 GB, 4 Cores)	Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second	22,259.00	10,621.00
Queries per second	222,590.00	106,210.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	0.32	0.86
Average Latency (ms)	0.45	0.94
Maximum Latency (ms)	1.33	2.5
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	0.59	1.03

MySQL Write-only

	UpCloud – Balanced (8 GB, 4 Cores)	Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second	7,108.00	10,229.00
Queries per second	71,080.00	102,290.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	0.7	0.64
Average Latency (ms)	1.41	0.98
Maximum Latency (ms)	25.2	2.08
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	1.93	1.23

MySQL Read/Write

	UpCloud – Balanced (8 GB, 4 Cores)	Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second	5,280.00	5,072.00
Queries per second	52,800.00	50,720.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	1.01	1.59
Average Latency (ms)	1.89	1.97
Maximum Latency (ms)	33.44	3.94
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	2.57	2.39

MySQL INSERT

	UpCloud – Balanced (8 GB, 4 Cores)	Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second	9,445.00	16,038.00
Queries per second	94,450.00	160,380.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	0.48	0.38
Average Latency (ms)	1.06	0.62
Maximum Latency (ms)	26.94	13.18
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	1.44	0.8

MySQL Bulk INSERT

	UpCloud – Balanced (8 GB, 4 Cores)	Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second	3,327,217.00	2,424,342.00
Queries per second	33,272,170.00	24,243,420.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	0	0
Average Latency (ms)	0	0
Maximum Latency (ms)	150.75	205.81
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	0	0

MySQL SELECT

	UpCloud – Balanced (8 GB, 4 Cores)	Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second	664,037.00	241,313.00
Queries per second	6,640,370.00	2,413,130.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	0.01	0.03
Average Latency (ms)	0.01	0.04
Maximum Latency (ms)	0.31	0.76
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	0.02	0.05

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

	UpCloud – Balanced (8 GB, 4 Cores)	Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second	16,890.00	12,080.00
Queries per second	168,900.00	120,800.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	0.16	0.21
Average Latency (ms)	0.59	0.83
Maximum Latency (ms)	3.66	3.31
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	0.92	1.04

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

	UpCloud – Balanced (8 GB, 4 Cores)	Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second	17,978.00	10,527.00
Queries per second	179,780.00	105,270.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	0.15	0.16
Average Latency (ms)	0.56	0.95
Maximum Latency (ms)	1.62	3.25
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	0.89	1.23

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

	UpCloud – Balanced (8 GB, 4 Cores)	Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second	7,331.00	17,123.00
Queries per second	73,310.00	171,230.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	0.5	0.38
Average Latency (ms)	1.36	0.58
Maximum Latency (ms)	24.1	2
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	2.26	0.78

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

	UpCloud – Balanced (8 GB, 4 Cores)	Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second	8,267.00	16,979.00
Queries per second	82,670.00	169,790.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	0.48	0.38
Average Latency (ms)	1.21	0.59
Maximum Latency (ms)	14.03	4.13
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	1.64	0.8

MySQL DELETE

	UpCloud – Balanced (8 GB, 4 Cores)	Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second	289,336.00	156,424.00
Queries per second	2,893,360.00	1,564,240.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	0.01	0.03
Average Latency (ms)	0.03	0.06
Maximum Latency (ms)	33.11	4.87
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	0.03	0.07

Redis

	UpCloud – Balanced (8 GB, 4 Cores)	Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
PING_INLINE per Second	239,234.44	88,652.48
PING_MBULK per Second	223,214.28	89,605.73
SET per Second	257,731.95	90,171.33
GET per Second	269,541.78	90,579.71
INCR per Second	240,963.86	90,744.10
LPUSH per Second	258,397.94	90,497.73
RPUSH per Second	267,379.66	90,415.91
LPOP per Second	267,379.66	90,909.09
RPOP per Second	272,479.56	90,661.83
SADD per Second	280,898.88	90,252.70
HSET per Second	258,397.94	90,415.91
SPOP per Second	253,164.55	89,928.05
ZADD per Second	250,626.58	90,415.91
ZPOPMIN per Second	269,541.78	90,009.01
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second	165,289.25	66,533.60
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second	70,372.98	36,179.45
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second	38,699.69	26,239.83
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second	35,298.27	22,547.91
MSET (10 keys) per Second	225,225.22	88,105.73

Redis Average Latency (ms)

	UpCloud – Balanced (8 GB, 4 Cores)	Vultr – High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
PING_INLINE	0.11	0.30
PING_MBULK	0.12	0.29
SET	0.10	0.29
GET	0.10	0.29
INCR	0.11	0.28
LPUSH	0.10	0.29
RPUSH	0.10	0.29
LPOP	0.10	0.28
RPOP	0.11	0.28
SADD	0.09	0.29
HSET	0.10	0.29
SPOP	0.10	0.29
ZADD	0.11	0.29
ZPOPMIN	0.10	0.29
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)	0.18	0.39
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)	0.41	0.71
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)	0.76	0.97
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)	0.84	1.14
MSET (10 keys)	0.14	0.30

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

When comparing the benchmarks of UpCloud's Balanced instance and Vultr's High Frequency Intel instance, it's evident that UpCloud's configuration, with 4 cores and 8GB of RAM, significantly outperforms Vultr's 2 cores and 2GB RAM setup across a variety of metrics, especially in CPU-intensive tasks and database operations, as evidenced by the substantially higher requests per second (rps) and lower latencies in Redis and MySQL benchmarks. UpCloud's superior CPU performance is reflected in lower average and peak latencies across multiple tasks, while Vultr struggles more with I/O-heavy workloads, particularly evident in longer latencies and lower throughput rates in file I/O and memory operations. Therefore, UpCloud's instance is more suited for applications requiring high CPU and memory capacity, such as complex web applications, data analytics, and enterprise databases, while Vultr’s instance would be more appropriate for lighter workloads, such as small web servers, low-traffic applications, or development environments.

From the friendly human:

If you found this VPS Showdown helpful in your search for a hosting provider, please consider supporting my efforts by signing up using my referral links for UpCloud and Vultr.

You can also support me directly by buying me a coffee.

UpCloud Balanced (8 GB, 4 Cores) vs. Vultr High Frequency Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)