VPS Showdown VPS Showdown

DigitalOcean Premium AMD (1 GB) vs. Linode Nanode (1 GB)

vs.

Same showdown, different day. Today I've got brand new instances from DigitalOcean and Linode and ran my world famous suite of benchmarking scripts. All instances were spun up with Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 and were created in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Without further ado, here's the results.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Last Benchmarked Sat, 01 Aug 2026 05:09:47 GMT Sat, 01 Aug 2026 05:01:32 GMT
Linux Distro Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version 7.0.0-27-generic 7.0.0-22-generic
MySQL Version 8.4.10-0ubuntu0.26.04.1 8.4.10-0ubuntu0.26.04.1
Redis Version 8.0.5 8.0.5
Location New York, NY Newark, NJ
Monthly Price $7.00 $5.00
RAM (GB) 1 1
CPU Cores 1 1
Storage (TB) 25 25
Storage Type NVMe SSD
Transfer (TB) 1 1

Head-to-head

Category winners from the latest benchmarks.

CategoryWinner
CPU (events/sec)Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Memory (read MiB/s)Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Disk I/O (MiB/s)Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
MySQL (read/write tps)Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Redis (GET/sec)Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Value (CPU events per $/mo)Linode – Nanode (1 GB)

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) takes 6 of 6 categories.

CPU

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Vendor AuthenticAMD AuthenticAMD
Model Name DO-Premium-AMD AMD EPYC 7642 48-Core Processor
Clock Speed (MHz) 1,996.25 2,300.00
CPU Cache Size (KB) 512.00 512.00
BogoMips 3,992.49 4,600.00
Events per Second 1,324.09 1,479.09
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.64 0.65
Average Latency (ms) 0.75 0.68
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.68 4.07
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.81 0.69

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Operations per second 4,911,179.23 5,162,780.30
Mebibytes per second 4,796.07 5,041.78
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.42 1.07
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Operations per second 4,739,304.36 5,347,459.67
Mebibytes per second 4,628.23 5,222.13
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.68 0.26
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Reads per Second 1,630.22 2,518.00
Writes per Second 1,086.81 1,678.67
Fsyncs per Second 3,484.79 5,375.23
Read Mebibytes per Second 25.47 39.34
Written Mebibytes per Second 16.98 26.23
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.16 0.1
Maximum Latency (ms) 7.68 14.25
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.54 0.35

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 1,821.68 1,639.75
Average Latency (ms) 1,829.83 1,650.21
Maximum Latency (ms) 1,839.40 1,660.37
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1,836.24 1,648.20

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 6,287.00 9,017.00
Queries per second 62,870.00 90,170.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.22 1.02
Average Latency (ms) 1.59 1.11
Maximum Latency (ms) 139.73 5.75
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2 1.27

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 3,386.00 8,101.00
Queries per second 33,860.00 81,010.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.26 0.87
Average Latency (ms) 2.95 1.23
Maximum Latency (ms) 31.46 11.04
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5.37 1.64

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 1,941.00 3,971.00
Queries per second 19,410.00 39,710.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.76 1.98
Average Latency (ms) 5.15 2.52
Maximum Latency (ms) 56.29 17.34
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 8.28 3.07

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 5,930.00 12,157.00
Queries per second 59,300.00 121,570.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.76 0.58
Average Latency (ms) 1.68 0.82
Maximum Latency (ms) 13.82 13.14
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.13 1.12

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 1,259,342.00 1,346,717.00
Queries per second 12,593,420.00 13,467,170.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 524.15 454.87
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 132,782.00 211,595.00
Queries per second 1,327,820.00 2,115,950.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.05 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.07 0.05
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.64 3.28
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.11 0.06

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 4,504.00 6,687.00
Queries per second 45,040.00 66,870.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.64 0.46
Average Latency (ms) 2.22 1.49
Maximum Latency (ms) 6.76 5
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.3 1.93

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 6,228.00 7,633.00
Queries per second 62,280.00 76,330.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.54 0.46
Average Latency (ms) 1.6 1.31
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.59 3.52
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.3 1.73

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 5,980.00 12,921.00
Queries per second 59,800.00 129,210.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.79 0.6
Average Latency (ms) 1.67 0.77
Maximum Latency (ms) 36.23 10.21
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.81 0.99

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 6,226.00 11,621.00
Queries per second 62,260.00 116,210.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.8 0.59
Average Latency (ms) 1.6 0.86
Maximum Latency (ms) 29.46 70.33
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.66 1.3

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 57,959.00 137,539.00
Queries per second 579,590.00 1,375,390.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.05 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.17 0.07
Maximum Latency (ms) 98.1 5.83
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.08 0.1

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 62,073.25 85,324.23
PING_MBULK per Second 63,451.78 72,150.07
SET per Second 64,516.13 83,682.01
GET per Second 65,189.05 86,430.43
INCR per Second 60,350.03 85,984.52
LPUSH per Second 60,168.47 85,324.23
RPUSH per Second 60,496.07 85,543.20
LPOP per Second 60,864.27 85,034.02
RPOP per Second 64,557.78 84,961.77
SADD per Second 59,630.29 85,763.29
HSET per Second 60,350.03 84,961.77
SPOP per Second 60,024.01 85,984.52
ZADD per Second 62,034.74 85,106.38
ZPOPMIN per Second 63,211.12 86,580.09
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 33,967.39 44,782.80
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 17,322.02 21,213.41
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 10,161.57 14,192.45
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 9,291.09 11,773.02
MSET (10 keys) per Second 52,548.61 72,046.11

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
PING_INLINE0.510.37
PING_MBULK0.490.43
SET0.490.39
GET0.480.37
INCR0.520.37
LPUSH0.530.38
RPUSH0.530.38
LPOP0.520.38
RPOP0.490.38
SADD0.530.37
HSET0.530.38
SPOP0.520.37
ZADD0.510.38
ZPOPMIN0.500.37
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)1.010.80
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.941.61
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)3.202.49
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)3.482.96
MSET (10 keys)0.750.57

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The Linode Nanode instance outperforms the DigitalOcean Premium AMD in most benchmarks, notably excelling in Redis operations with higher requests per second and lower latencies. While both providers deliver competitive results, Linode's superior CPU performance and lower latency in Redis commands, such as "PING_INLINE" with 85,324.23 RPS vs DigitalOcean's 62,073.25 RPS, make it the better choice for CPU-intensive tasks or applications requiring low latency. DigitalOcean may appeal to those prioritizing budget constraints, as it is more affordable, but if performance is the priority, the Linode Nanode is the better option for demanding workloads.

From the friendly human:

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Providers & pricing

DigitalOcean overview Linode overviewDigitalOcean Premium AMD (1 GB) pricing Linode Nanode (1 GB) pricing

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