Lately there is a shift in moving from x86 CPU architecture to ARM one which is more eficient and more cheap. There are VPS providers like Hetzner and cloud provider like Oracle that started to add more ARM products in their portofolio. A while back I have made this compression between Oracle ARM and Hetzner ARM that can be checked here.

Basically for a while ARM servers are able to keep most of the online application and I wanted to make an article with WordPress benchmarks so you can see what it has to offer. We will compare it with an x86 one so you can see exactly what is happening.

ARM VPS Server Benchmarks

Without loosing to much time let’s see what yabs.sh has to say about an ARM server that has 4 CPUs and 8 GB off RAM, the VPS server is created on Hetzner and it costs 7.72 Euros/month. You can also check this Hetzner Review in case you need more details and you can get 20 Euros for free if you use the affiliate link in this article.

Yabs.sh

root@cloud:~# curl -sL yabs.sh | bash
# ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## #
#              Yet-Another-Bench-Script              #
#                     v2023-09-06                    #
# https://github.com/masonr/yet-another-bench-script #
# ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## #

Thu Sep 21 11:57:54 UTC 2023

ARM compatibility is considered *experimental*

Basic System Information:
---------------------------------
Uptime     : 0 days, 0 hours, 2 minutes
Processor  : Neoverse-N1
CPU cores  : 4 @ ??? MHz
AES-NI     : ✔ Enabled
VM-x/AMD-V : ❌ Disabled
RAM        : 7.5 GiB
Swap       : 0.0 KiB
Disk       : 75.0 GiB
Distro     : Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS
Kernel     : 5.15.0-79-generic
VM Type    : KVM
IPv4/IPv6  : ✔ Online / ✔ Online

IPv6 Network Information:
---------------------------------
ISP        : Hetzner Online GmbH
ASN        : AS24940 Hetzner Online GmbH
Host       : Hetzner
Location   : Gunzenhausen, Bavaria (BY)
Country    : Germany

fio Disk Speed Tests (Mixed R/W 50/50):
---------------------------------
Block Size | 4k            (IOPS) | 64k           (IOPS)
  ------   | ---            ----  | ----           ----
Read       | 153.80 MB/s  (38.4k) | 1.11 GB/s    (17.3k)
Write      | 153.69 MB/s  (38.4k) | 1.14 GB/s    (17.9k)
Total      | 307.49 MB/s  (76.8k) | 2.25 GB/s    (35.3k)
           |                      |
Block Size | 512k          (IOPS) | 1m            (IOPS)
  ------   | ---            ----  | ----           ----
Read       | 1.83 GB/s     (3.5k) | 1.82 GB/s     (1.7k)
Write      | 1.99 GB/s     (3.8k) | 2.03 GB/s     (1.9k)
Total      | 3.82 GB/s     (7.4k) | 3.85 GB/s     (3.7k)

iperf3 Network Speed Tests (IPv4):
---------------------------------
Provider        | Location (Link)           | Send Speed      | Recv Speed      | Ping
-----           | -----                     | ----            | ----            | ----
Clouvider       | London, UK (10G)          | 5.63 Gbits/sec  | 7.73 Gbits/sec  | 20.4 ms
Scaleway        | Paris, FR (10G)           | 8.53 Gbits/sec  | 5.87 Gbits/sec  | 21.3 ms
NovoServe       | North Holland, NL (40G)   | busy            | busy            | 12.7 ms
Uztelecom       | Tashkent, UZ (10G)        | 2.44 Gbits/sec  | busy            | 88.2 ms
Clouvider       | NYC, NY, US (10G)         | 1.73 Gbits/sec  | 1.47 Gbits/sec  | 85.9 ms
Clouvider       | Dallas, TX, US (10G)      | 1.17 Gbits/sec  | 1.44 Gbits/sec  | 123 ms
Clouvider       | Los Angeles, CA, US (10G) | 806 Mbits/sec   | 1.20 Gbits/sec  | 148 ms

iperf3 Network Speed Tests (IPv6):
---------------------------------
Provider        | Location (Link)           | Send Speed      | Recv Speed      | Ping
-----           | -----                     | ----            | ----            | ----
Clouvider       | London, UK (10G)          | 2.69 Gbits/sec  | 4.84 Gbits/sec  | 20.2 ms
Scaleway        | Paris, FR (10G)           | 4.57 Gbits/sec  | 3.86 Gbits/sec  | 25.6 ms
NovoServe       | North Holland, NL (40G)   | busy            | busy            | 14.6 ms
Uztelecom       | Tashkent, UZ (10G)        | 2.20 Gbits/sec  | 2.03 Gbits/sec  | 88.4 ms
Clouvider       | NYC, NY, US (10G)         | 1.72 Gbits/sec  | 2.12 Gbits/sec  | 92.7 ms
Clouvider       | Dallas, TX, US (10G)      | 1.43 Gbits/sec  | 1.46 Gbits/sec  | 122 ms
Clouvider       | Los Angeles, CA, US (10G) | 642 Mbits/sec   | 1.20 Gbits/sec  | 148 ms

Geekbench 6 Benchmark Test:
---------------------------------
Test            | Value
                |
Single Core     | 1072
Multi Core      | 3439
Full Test       | https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/2699258

As can be seen here the benchmark results are pretty good and it compares with any x86 CPU the network and IO tests are similar with other ones.

WordPress Benchmark

Next I have installed WordPress and I run a benchmark in the admin area to test the exact WordPress performance:

This are pretty good results and any score that is above 8 is quite good. Random binary operations are the ones that are the lowest.

x68 VPS Server Benchmarks

Same tests were done on an AMD x86 VPS that has 4 CPUs and 8 GB off RAM but it costs twice + the price 16.18 Euros/month.

yabs.sh

In this picture you can see that they are not that far apart and you can see the CPU scores that are similar.

WordPress Benchmarks

The server score is bigger with 0.7 and in compression with 8.1 and across the board you have scores that are a little high.

Conclusions

ARM started to be more and more present and if I were you I would give them a try, you can reduce your infrastructure costs easily but be sure to test everything before you move. The results are pretty good and I have started moving my sites to ARM architecture. I will came back with an update in the coming months.