WordPress on ARM vs x86: A Benchmark Comparison
Real benchmark numbers comparing ARM and x86 VPS servers running WordPress on Hetzner — performance, cost, and what to expect.
There’s been a steady shift from x86 to ARM in the VPS world. Hetzner, Oracle, and AWS (Graviton) all offer ARM instances now, and the prices are noticeably lower. I ran some benchmarks to see how ARM actually holds up running WordPress against an equivalent x86 server — same provider, similar specs, real numbers.
Since I originally ran these tests, Hetzner raised prices effective April 2026 (30-37% across cloud tiers) because DRAM costs went up. I’ve updated the pricing below to reflect current rates, but the performance comparison still holds.
If you want to see the Oracle ARM vs Hetzner ARM comparison I did earlier, check this article.
ARM VPS benchmarks
The ARM server is a Hetzner CAX31: 4 vCPUs (Ampere Altra), 8 GB RAM, running Ubuntu 22.04. Cost: €11.99/month (rising to €15.99/month from April 2026).
yabs.sh results
Basic System Information:
Processor : Neoverse-N1
CPU cores : 4 @ ??? MHz
RAM : 7.5 GiB
Disk : 75.0 GiB
Distro : Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS
VM Type : KVM
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)
Geekbench 6:
Single Core : 1072
Multi Core : 3439Disk IO is fast, network is solid, Geekbench scores compare well with mid-range x86.
WordPress benchmark
Any score above 8 is good here. Random binary operations are the weak spot on ARM — everything else is competitive.
x86 VPS benchmarks
Same test, same Hetzner datacenter, same spec count (4 vCPU / 8 GB RAM) but x86 AMD (CPX31 with Genoa AMD EPYC). Cost: €16.49/month (rising to €21.49/month from April 2026).
yabs.sh results
The CPU scores are close. IO and network are similar. You’re not getting dramatically more compute for the extra money.
WordPress benchmark
The x86 server scores about 0.7 points higher across the board in the WordPress benchmark. Independent tests from FlyWP and community benchmarks on Reddit (late 2025) put the gap at roughly 7-10% in raw throughput and 20-30% in single-thread performance. Whether that delta justifies paying more depends on your workload.
Quick comparison
| ARM (CAX31) | x86 (CPX31) | |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | Ampere Altra, 4 vCPU | AMD EPYC Genoa, 4 vCPU |
| RAM | 8 GB | 8 GB |
| Storage | 80 GB NVMe | 80 GB NVMe |
| Price (current) | €11.99/mo | €16.49/mo |
| Price (April 2026) | €15.99/mo | €21.49/mo |
| Single-thread perf | ~1070 (GB6) | ~1650 (GB6) |
| WordPress throughput | ~7-10% slower | Baseline |
| Best for | Steady workloads, budget setups | High-traffic, burst-heavy sites |
Other ARM VPS providers worth knowing
Hetzner is not the only option. If you want to compare:
- AWS Graviton (EC2) — ARM instances that AWS has been pushing hard. Reserved instance pricing can beat Hetzner, but on-demand rates are higher.
- Oracle Cloud — The always-free tier includes an ARM instance (4 OCPU, 24 GB RAM). I covered this in my Hetzner vs Oracle ARM comparison.
- Vultr — Has ARM-based cloud compute in select regions.
Conclusion
ARM works. I’ve moved several sites over and haven’t had issues. The performance gap against x86 is real, around 7-10% in throughput and more in single-thread benchmarks, but most WordPress setups behind a cache layer won’t feel it.
The price gap has narrowed with Hetzner’s 2026 increases, but ARM is still cheaper. For small to medium WordPress sites, staging environments, or projects where cost matters more than peak single-thread speed, ARM does the job.
If you want to try it, grab €20 on Hetzner and test your own stack before committing.
