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

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Fresh benchmarks coming at ya. Today I've spun up some brand new instance from DigitalOcean and Linode and ran my world famous suite of benchmarking scripts. All instances were running Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and were created in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Let's get into the numbers.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Last Benchmarked Tue, 26 May 2026 21:00:53 GMT Fri, 29 May 2026 15:00:53 GMT
Linux Distro Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version 6.8.0-71-generic 6.8.0-111-generic
MySQL Version 8.0.45-0ubuntu0.24.04.1 8.0.45-0ubuntu0.24.04.1
Redis Version 7.0.15 7.0.15
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

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 4,599.99
Events per Second 725.83 1,022.23
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.59 0.61
Average Latency (ms) 1.38 0.98
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.83 5.4
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.71 2.39

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Operations per second 4,692,657.27 5,296,233.64
Mebibytes per second 4,582.67 5,172.10
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.69 3.05
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Operations per second 5,100,207.83 5,154,651.90
Mebibytes per second 4,980.67 5,033.84
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.77 3.06
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Reads per Second 1,646.64 2,055.76
Writes per Second 1,097.76 1,370.51
Fsyncs per Second 3,512.94 4,389.22
Read Mebibytes per Second 25.73 32.12
Written Mebibytes per Second 17.15 21.41
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.16 0.13
Maximum Latency (ms) 17.78 12.79
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.54 0.35

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 1,711.04 1,633.32
Average Latency (ms) 1,730.48 1,644.62
Maximum Latency (ms) 1,742.45 1,653.29
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1,739.68 1,648.20

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 5,648.00 7,575.00
Queries per second 56,480.00 75,750.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.45 1.22
Average Latency (ms) 1.77 1.32
Maximum Latency (ms) 6.7 4.67
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.18 1.42

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 3,404.00 5,800.00
Queries per second 34,040.00 58,000.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.58 1.15
Average Latency (ms) 2.93 1.72
Maximum Latency (ms) 21.68 12.35
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.49 2.39

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 1,673.00 2,955.00
Queries per second 16,730.00 29,550.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 3.6 2.64
Average Latency (ms) 5.97 3.38
Maximum Latency (ms) 38.67 22.69
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 8.74 4.41

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 5,428.00 8,921.00
Queries per second 54,280.00 89,210.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.91 0.65
Average Latency (ms) 1.84 1.12
Maximum Latency (ms) 51.29 8.92
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.91 1.42

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 1,142,842.00 1,288,467.00
Queries per second 11,428,420.00 12,884,670.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 460.34 398.24
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 132,341.00 170,179.00
Queries per second 1,323,410.00 1,701,790.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.06 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.07 0.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.89 7.27
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.1 0.08

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 6,383.00 7,819.00
Queries per second 63,830.00 78,190.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.54 0.42
Average Latency (ms) 1.56 1.28
Maximum Latency (ms) 6.01 6.03
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.26 1.64

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 6,750.00 7,328.00
Queries per second 67,500.00 73,280.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.53 0.3
Average Latency (ms) 1.48 1.36
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.62 4.97
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.03 1.76

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 4,415.00 8,603.00
Queries per second 44,150.00 86,030.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.88 0.69
Average Latency (ms) 2.26 1.16
Maximum Latency (ms) 35.08 6.97
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.03 1.7

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 4,746.00 7,719.00
Queries per second 47,460.00 77,190.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.93 0.65
Average Latency (ms) 2.11 1.29
Maximum Latency (ms) 47.98 54.76
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.36 1.73

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 39,676.00 80,451.00
Queries per second 396,760.00 804,510.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.06 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.25 0.12
Maximum Latency (ms) 15.76 16.14
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.61 0.42

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 35,511.36 44,052.86
PING_MBULK per Second 39,016.78 44,563.28
SET per Second 36,764.71 44,072.28
GET per Second 35,549.23 44,345.89
INCR per Second 37,821.48 42,535.09
LPUSH per Second 37,608.12 41,545.49
RPUSH per Second 37,467.22 37,299.52
LPOP per Second 36,805.30 43,327.55
RPOP per Second 36,656.89 43,103.45
SADD per Second 38,895.37 43,994.72
HSET per Second 38,595.14 43,956.04
SPOP per Second 38,109.75 44,130.62
ZADD per Second 38,417.21 42,390.84
ZPOPMIN per Second 39,447.73 43,159.26
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 24,975.02 28,843.38
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 13,698.63 15,153.81
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 9,859.99 10,595.47
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 8,241.31 9,122.42
MSET (10 keys) per Second 36,101.08 40,112.31

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
PING_INLINE0.950.78
PING_MBULK0.870.77
SET0.930.78
GET0.950.77
INCR0.900.80
LPUSH0.900.82
RPUSH0.910.90
LPOP0.930.80
RPOP0.930.80
SADD0.880.78
HSET0.890.79
SPOP0.890.77
ZADD0.890.81
ZPOPMIN0.860.79
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)1.401.23
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)2.612.38
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)3.613.44
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)4.293.96
MSET (10 keys)0.970.88

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

After analyzing the benchmark results from both DigitalOcean's Premium AMD (1 GB) and Linode's Nanode (1 GB) instances, it's clear that the Linode Nanode offers slightly higher performance across the board, particularly in Redis operations, with higher requests per second (rps) and lower latencies. Both instances perform well in CPU and memory operations, but Linode's instance has marginally better throughput in file I/O tasks. The DigitalOcean instance, however, edges out in terms of cost, offering the same configuration for $7/month compared to Linode's $5/month. Therefore, if cost is a major consideration, DigitalOcean’s instance is more economical despite slightly lower performance. Conversely, if marginal performance improvements are crucial, Linode's Nanode instance is the better choice, especially for applications that benefit from higher rps and lower latencies in Redis and other operations.

From the friendly human:

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