Benchmarks / Compute

Compute benchmarks

CPU, memory, disk and network performance — plus steal time, run-to-run variance and the other overselling signals hiding behind the spec sheet.

CPU all-core vs. monthly price

4 / 4 plans

Cross-host P50 against the net monthly price (EUR, excluding VAT — tax depends on the buyer, not the provider). Ringed dots sit on the efficient frontier: no cheaper measured plan is faster on this metric. Points are deliberately never connected.

View

Ringed dots are on the efficient frontier for this metric.Faded points need 10 independent fresh hosts before ranking.

Raw performance

Identical deterministic workloads on every machine — differences are the hardware, never the benchmark.

CPU · single core

Cross-host P50 · MB/s · higher is better · whiskers span P10–P90

What this measures

SHA-256 over 64 KiB buffers on one core for 3 s. Cache-resident and deterministic; uses the CPU's crypto extensions where present. source →

$ providerbench run -t cpu

CPU · all cores

Cross-host P50 · MB/s · higher is better · whiskers span P10–P90

What this measures

The same SHA-256 workload running on every core simultaneously for 3 s — what the machine sustains when you actually use all the vCPUs you pay for. source →

$ providerbench run -t cpu

Memory · copy bandwidth

Cross-host P50 · GB/s · higher is better · whiskers span P10–P90

What this measures

Copies between two 256 MiB buffers for 2 s — far beyond any CPU cache, so this is DRAM bandwidth, not cache tricks. source →

$ providerbench run -t memory

Memory · random access

Cross-host P50 · ns · lower is better · whiskers span P10–P90

What this measures

Pointer chase through a randomly permuted 64 MiB array (fixed seed). Every load depends on the previous one, so prefetching can't hide the true latency. source →

$ providerbench run -t memory

Disk · random 4K read

Cross-host P50 · IOPS · higher is better · whiskers span P10–P90

What this measures

Random 4 KiB direct-I/O reads at queue depth 4 for 2 s across the 1 GiB file — the access pattern of databases and busy filesystems. source →

$ providerbench run -t disk

Network · download

Cross-host P50 · Mbps · higher is better · whiskers span P10–P90

What this measures

Sequential 50 MiB downloads from speed.cloudflare.com for up to 10 s (200 MiB max), counted at the socket. source →

$ providerbench run -t network

The overselling report

On honest hardware, identical work takes identical time. These metrics catch the difference between the cores you rent and the cores you get.

Consistency · variation

Cross-host P50 · CV % · lower is better · whiskers span P10–P90

High spread = noisy neighbors or burst throttling.

What this measures

400 identical ~20 ms hashing units back to back; this is the coefficient of variation of their runtimes. On honest hardware, identical work takes identical time. source →

$ providerbench run -t steal

CPU steal time

Cross-host P50 · % · lower is better · whiskers span P10–P90

Above ~2% sustained is an oversold host. Linux only.

What this measures

Steal ticks from /proc/stat while all cores are saturated for 5 s — the kernel's own record of CPU time the hypervisor gave to other tenants. source →

$ providerbench run -t steal

Tail latency · p99 / median

Cross-host P50 · ratio · lower is better · whiskers span P10–P90

Burstable instances show their credit cliff here.

What this measures

How much slower the worst 1% of those 400 identical units ran compared to the median. 1.0 is perfect. source →

$ providerbench run -t steal

Disk · fsync latency (p50)

Cross-host P50 · ms · lower is better · whiskers span P10–P90

Suspiciously low values can mean the storage acknowledges before data is durable.

What this measures

Median of 50 rounds of a 4 KiB write followed by fsync — the durability path every database commit waits on. source →

$ providerbench run -t disk

Full comparison

Every headline metric side by side — click a provider for its full report.

Provider / plan	€/mo	Perf.index	Valueindex	CPU 1-coreMB/s	CPU all-coreMB/s	Mem BWGB/s	Seq writeMB/s	4K readIOPS	fsync p50ms	DownloadMbps	ConsistencyCV %	Steal%
Hetznercloud-vps · cx23 · cheap · nbg1 · 2 vCPU10 independent hosts · 30 runsmeasured 24 Jul 2026 UTC	5.990.0096/h	68.9	100.0	1,374μ993 · p10 250	3,027μ2,060 · p10 486	12.2μ9.8 · p10 3.0	1,177μ1,203 · p10 853	15,679μ16,158 · p10 12,914	1.03μ1.00 · p90 1.31 · p99 1.34	2,036μ2,019 · p10 1,809	15.8μ13.9 · p90 24.7 · p99 29.7	0.00bestμ0.00 · p90 0.00 · p99 0.00
Hetznercloud-vps · ccx13 · nbg1 · 2 dedicated vCPU10 independent hosts · 30 runsmeasured 24 Jul 2026 UTC	43.490.0697/h	89.2	17.8	1,788bestμ1,785 · p10 1,779	3,460μ3,388 · p10 3,374	24.5bestμ24.4 · p10 23.5	1,241μ1,230 · p10 1,194	23,928μ24,489 · p10 21,537	0.62μ0.54 · p90 0.71 · p99 0.72	2,174bestμ2,086 · p10 1,701	11.2μ11.2 · p90 11.5 · p99 12.5	0.00bestμ0.00 · p90 0.00 · p99 0.00
Hetznercloud-vps · cpx22 · medium · hel1 · 2 vCPU10 independent hosts · 30 runsmeasured 24 Jul 2026 UTC	19.990.0320/h	88.1	38.3	1,756μ1,734 · p10 1,674	3,560bestμ3,531 · p10 3,519	23.8μ23.6 · p10 22.5	1,240μ1,236 · p10 1,072	25,464μ25,232 · p10 21,661	0.73μ0.79 · p90 1.18 · p99 1.23	2,091μ1,967 · p10 1,595	13.6μ14.1 · p90 17.5 · p99 19.5	0.00bestμ0.00 · p90 0.00 · p99 0.00
VercelSandbox · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · usage-based · iad1 · 2 vCPU10 independent hosts · 30 runsmeasured 24 Jul 2026 UTC	218.380.2992/h	100.0	4.0	1,314μ933 · p10 352	2,637μ1,874 · p10 708	6.7μ5.5 · p10 3.5	1,607bestμ1,514 · p10 1,312	69,839bestμ62,647 · p10 47,377	0.04bestμ0.04 · p90 0.05 · p99 0.06	1,882μ1,946 · p10 1,652	3.0bestμ3.4 · p90 5.3 · p99 6.4	0.60μ0.53 · p90 0.61 · p99 0.69

Raw reports: data/results/ · every chart links its benchmark source