Comparison: THE.Hosting vs Kamatera vs UpCloud vs Scaleway

VPS for High-Load Systems: An Engineering-Driven Approach to Infrastructure Selection

100,000 concurrent connections.
A database with 500 GB of active data.
An API processing 10,000 requests per second.
Real-time analytics on streaming data.

This is what “high-load” means in 2025.

Choosing infrastructure for such workloads is not about “which provider is cheaper.” It’s about failure-resistant architecture, disk operation latency, CPU steal time under sustained load, and peak network throughput.

We compared four providers using configurations starting at 16 vCPU / 16 GB RAM and above — real production-grade servers, not entry-level plans.

Evaluation Criteria for High-Load Systems

CPU: Dedicated vs Shared

Shared vCPU means multiple virtual machines share the same physical cores. Providers often overcommit — selling 16 virtual cores backed by 8 physical ones.
When your neighbor triggers a CI/CD pipeline, CPU steal time may spike to 20–40%.

Dedicated vCPU means the core is fully yours.
Performance delta:

• Dedicated: p99 latency around 12 ms
• Shared: fluctuations from 15 to 180 ms

Disk I/O: IOPS Matter More Than Storage Size

PostgreSQL on a 50 GB dataset can generate over 200,000 disk operations per second.

Typical IOPS ranges:

• SATA SSD: 3,000–5,000 IOPS
• Consumer NVMe: 100,000–300,000 IOPS
• Enterprise NVMe RAID 10: 200,000+ IOPS with redundancy

ECC RAM: Data Integrity Matters

Google’s research shows: 8% of DIMM modules record at least one memory error per year.
In fintech, one corrupted byte means a wrong database value.

ECC RAM:

• Automatically corrects single-bit errors
• Detects multi-bit failures

Provider Comparison: Production-Grade Configurations

THE.Hosting

Configuration: Rhodium (16 vCore, 16 GB ECC RAM, 210 GB NVMe RAID 10)
Price: €50.00/mo (€42.50 with 15% annual discount)

• CPU: 16 dedicated AMD EPYC vCores
• RAM: 16 GB ECC
• Storage: 210 GB NVMe RAID 10
• Network: 10 Gbps
• Traffic: Unlimited
• Locations: 50+

Every core is fully dedicated. CPU steal time stays at 0.1–0.3%.
Competitors shared setups: 5–15% under normal load, 30–40% during peak hours.

NVMe RAID 10 = striped for speed + mirrored for resiliency.
fio results: 198,000–215,000 IOPS consistently.
ECC RAM across all plans.

Scalability Options:

• Mithril (20 vCores, 24 GB, 310 GB): €80/mo (€68)
• Adamantium (24 vCores, 32 GB, 410 GB): €111/mo (€94.35)
• Obsidian (32 vCores, 64 GB, 510 GB): €160/mo (€136)

Kamatera: Flexible Customization, Unpredictable Pricing

Configuration: 8 vCPU Type B, 16 GB RAM, 200 GB SSD
Price: ~$68–92/mo

• CPU: 8 dedicated vCPU (Type B)
• RAM: 16 GB (no ECC)
• Storage: 200 GB SSD (not NVMe)
• Traffic: 5 TB included, $0.01/GB overage

Real cost example:
An API with 10M requests/day uses 15–20 TB traffic → +$100–150.
Backups: +$10, Managed: +$199.
Total: $200+/month.

Performance: SSD caps at 8,500–12,000 IOPS, a bottleneck for database-heavy workloads.

UpCloud: MaxIOPS Technology

Configuration: High CPU 8 cores, 16 GB RAM, 160 GB MaxIOPS
Price: $80/mo (~€75)

• CPU: 8 dedicated vCPU
• RAM: 16 GB (no ECC)
• Storage: 160 GB MaxIOPS
• Traffic: Zero-cost egress (Fair Use Policy)
• Locations: 13

MaxIOPS benchmarks: 140,000–180,000 IOPS (4K random) — excellent for PostgreSQL, MongoDB.

Fair Use Policy:
“Zero-cost egress” unless usage is excessive. Threshold not documented.

Limitations:

• Network: 2 Gbps
• Only 13 locations

Scaleway: The French Alternative

Configuration: COMPUTE-OPT2-CPU-8-RAM-16
Price: €30/mo + €15 storage = €48/mo

• CPU: 8 dedicated AMD EPYC
• Storage: 200 GB block NVMe (60,000–80,000 IOPS)
• Traffic: Unmetered
• Locations: 3 (Paris, Amsterdam, Warsaw)

Major limitation:
800 Mbps network — bottleneck for API large payloads and video streaming.
THE.Hosting and Kamatera offer 10 Gbps.

Pricing Comparison: Production-Grade Configurations

*with 15% annual discount

Benchmarks: Real-World Tests

PostgreSQL OLTP (sysbench) — Transactions/sec

• THE.Hosting (16 vCPU, NVMe RAID 10): 4,247 TPS
• UpCloud (8 vCPU MaxIOPS): 3,819 TPS
• Scaleway (8 vCPU NVMe): 2,341 TPS
• Kamatera (8 vCPU SSD): 1,604 TPS

Web Application Load (wrk) — Requests/sec, p99 latency

• THE.Hosting: 18,421 req/s, 14.2 ms
• UpCloud: 16,789 req/s, 18.7 ms
• Scaleway: 14,203 req/s, 23.4 ms
• Kamatera: 11,847 req/s, 31.2 ms

Sustained CPU Load (6h) — CPU Steal Time

• THE.Hosting: 0.3%
• UpCloud: 2.4%
• Scaleway: 5.1%
• Kamatera: 12.7%

Network Throughput (iperf3) — Gbps

• THE.Hosting: 9.4 Gbps
• Kamatera: 8.7 Gbps
• UpCloud: 1.8 Gbps
• Scaleway: 0.78 Gbps

TCO: Hidden Costs

THE.Hosting

€50/mo includes everything — unlimited traffic, DDoS protection, IPv4+IPv6, snapshots.
TCO = listed price.

Kamatera

$68 base

• 20 TB overage → +$150
• Backups → +$10
• Managed → +$199
  TCO: $400+/mo

UpCloud

$80 base

• unpredictable Fair Use limits
• storage $0.10/GB
  TCO: $80–200+

Scaleway

€30 base + €15 storage + €2.88 IP
TCO: €65–80/mo, but 800 Mbps network is a compromise.

Use-Case Recommendations

Database Master (PostgreSQL, MongoDB)

Requirements: High IOPS, Dedicated CPU, ECC RAM, fast network.
Recommended: THE.Hosting Rhodium — 200K IOPS, ECC RAM, dedicated CPU ensures predictable query times.

API Gateway / Load Balancer

Requirements: >5 Gbps network, low steal time, unlimited traffic, global reach.
Recommended: THE.Hosting — 10 Gbps, unlimited bandwidth, 50+ locations, predictable latency.

Real-Time Analytics / Stream Processing

Requirements: High RAM, fast write-heavy storage, predictable CPU.
Recommended: THE.Hosting Adamantium — 32 GB ECC, NVMe performance ideal for Kafka/RabbitMQ.

Video Streaming / CDN

Requirements: Unlimited bandwidth, high throughput, global footprint.
Recommended: THE.Hosting — unlimited traffic, 10 Gbps, 50+ locations for edge deployments.

Final Recommendations

Choose THE.Hosting if:

• Your system is production-critical
• You need 200K+ IOPS for database-heavy workloads
• Traffic is unpredictable and requires true unlimited bandwidth
• You need a global footprint with 50+ locations
• You want predictable costs with no hidden fees
• ECC RAM is a must for data integrity

Best for: E-commerce, SaaS, Fintech, Gaming, API Gateways, Video Streaming.

Choose Kamatera if:

• You need non-standard configurations (48+ GB RAM, 96 cores)
• Managed services are essential and the budget allows +$200/mo
• You run GPU workloads for ML/AI

Choose UpCloud if:

• Your project is EU-only with strict GDPR needs
• You need top-tier disk performance
• MaxIOPS advantage outweighs network limitations

Choose Scaleway if:

• Your budget is very limited
• EU-only infrastructure is enough
• <800 Mbps network is acceptable
• You can leverage ARM optimization

Why THE.Hosting Leads the Market

• Dedicated vCPU everywhere — real dedicated cores, not marketing terms
• NVMe RAID 10 by default — 200K+ IOPS with built-in redundancy
• ECC RAM included — data protection as a standard, not an upsell
• True unlimited traffic — no fair use, no surprise billing
• TCO = sticker price — €50/mo means €50/mo
• 50+ locations at a single global price — no geo-pricing traps

For high-load systems, predictability beats cheapness — and THE.Hostingdelivers exactly that.