DigitalOcean Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) vs. Linode Linode (4 GB)
Same showdown, different day. Today I've spun up some brand new instance from DigitalOcean and Linode and did some benchmarking. Each instance was spun up with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and were created in the New York area (or close to it). Time to see who showed up today.
Overview
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) | Linode – (4 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Last Benchmarked | Sun, 31 May 2026 03:00:52 GMT | Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:52 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 | $21.00 | $24.00 |
| RAM (GB) | 2 | 4 |
| CPU Cores | 2 | 2 |
| Storage (TB) | 60 | 80 |
| Storage Type | NVMe | SSD |
| Transfer (TB) | 3 | 4 |
CPU
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) | Linode – (4 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | AuthenticAMD | AuthenticAMD |
| Model Name | DO-Premium-AMD | AMD EPYC 7713 64-Core Processor |
| Clock Speed (MHz) | 1,996.25 | 2,000.00 |
| CPU Cache Size (KB) | 512.00 | 512.00 |
| BogoMips | 3,992.50 | 3,999.99 |
| Events per Second | 1,599.39 | 3,444.02 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.59 | 0.28 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.62 | 0.29 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 0.82 | 4.83 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0.67 | 0.3 |
Memory
Memory Read
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) | Linode – (4 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Operations per second | 5,207,157.62 | 5,349,213.60 |
| Mebibytes per second | 5,085.11 | 5,223.84 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 0.2 | 3.16 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
Memory Write
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) | Linode – (4 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Operations per second | 5,245,096.07 | 5,332,401.09 |
| Mebibytes per second | 5,122.16 | 5,207.42 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 0.13 | 3.25 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
File I/O
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) | Linode – (4 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Reads per Second | 1,715.61 | 3,325.24 |
| Writes per Second | 1,143.67 | 2,216.89 |
| Fsyncs per Second | 3,669.98 | 7,095.98 |
| Read Mebibytes per Second | 26.81 | 51.96 |
| Written Mebibytes per Second | 17.87 | 34.64 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.15 | 0.08 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 16.22 | 13.12 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0.54 | 0.22 |
Mutex
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) | Linode – (4 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 556.73 | 864.93 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 825.56 | 931.61 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 865.15 | 968.34 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 861.95 | 960.30 |
MySQL
MySQL Read-only
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) | Linode – (4 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 6,259.00 | 5,919.00 |
| Queries per second | 62,590.00 | 59,190.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 1.31 | 1.29 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 1.6 | 1.69 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 4.28 | 8 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 1.96 | 2.03 |
MySQL Write-only
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) | Linode – (4 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 3,970.00 | 5,152.00 |
| Queries per second | 39,700.00 | 51,520.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 1.36 | 1.22 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 2.52 | 1.94 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 11.04 | 24.88 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 3.55 | 2.52 |
MySQL Read/Write
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) | Linode – (4 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 2,013.00 | 2,609.00 |
| Queries per second | 20,130.00 | 26,090.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 3.03 | 2.83 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 4.96 | 3.83 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 24.99 | 8.83 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 6.91 | 4.74 |
MySQL INSERT
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) | Linode – (4 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 5,675.00 | 7,493.00 |
| Queries per second | 56,750.00 | 74,930.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.96 | 0.73 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 1.76 | 1.33 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 12.44 | 15.06 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 2.91 | 1.86 |
MySQL Bulk INSERT
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) | Linode – (4 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 1,463,217.00 | 1,754,467.00 |
| Queries per second | 14,632,170.00 | 17,544,670.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.01 | 0.01 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 443.24 | 418.75 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
MySQL SELECT
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) | Linode – (4 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 125,762.00 | 130,180.00 |
| Queries per second | 1,257,620.00 | 1,301,800.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.05 | 0.05 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.08 | 0.08 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 1.37 | 4.63 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0.11 | 0.1 |
MySQL SELECT (Random Points)
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) | Linode – (4 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 7,556.00 | 8,212.00 |
| Queries per second | 75,560.00 | 82,120.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.51 | 0.33 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 1.32 | 1.22 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 6.33 | 11.27 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 1.79 | 2.3 |
MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) | Linode – (4 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 6,802.00 | 8,956.00 |
| Queries per second | 68,020.00 | 89,560.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.57 | 0.42 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 1.47 | 1.12 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 3.15 | 4.66 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 1.96 | 1.44 |
MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) | Linode – (4 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 5,367.00 | 7,381.00 |
| Queries per second | 53,670.00 | 73,810.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.96 | 0.81 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 1.86 | 1.35 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 13.89 | 8.43 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 2.71 | 1.76 |
MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) | Linode – (4 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 5,465.00 | 7,379.00 |
| Queries per second | 54,650.00 | 73,790.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.97 | 0.82 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 1.83 | 1.35 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 15.94 | 7.2 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 2.76 | 1.73 |
MySQL DELETE
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) | Linode – (4 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 59,025.00 | 58,502.00 |
| Queries per second | 590,250.00 | 585,020.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.04 | 0.04 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.17 | 0.17 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 9.29 | 8.26 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 1.3 | 1.14 |
Redis
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) | Linode – (4 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| PING_INLINE per Second | 52,631.58 | 44,444.45 |
| PING_MBULK per Second | 54,436.58 | 42,158.52 |
| SET per Second | 54,112.55 | 43,725.41 |
| GET per Second | 55,370.98 | 43,084.88 |
| INCR per Second | 54,141.85 | 43,917.44 |
| LPUSH per Second | 53,908.36 | 44,169.61 |
| RPUSH per Second | 53,792.36 | 42,918.46 |
| LPOP per Second | 52,938.06 | 43,630.02 |
| RPOP per Second | 54,141.85 | 42,900.04 |
| SADD per Second | 53,248.14 | 43,066.32 |
| HSET per Second | 53,908.36 | 42,826.55 |
| SPOP per Second | 52,521.01 | 43,821.21 |
| ZADD per Second | 53,850.30 | 43,706.29 |
| ZPOPMIN per Second | 54,259.36 | 46,554.93 |
| LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second | 39,093.04 | 30,084.24 |
| LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second | 24,962.56 | 21,141.65 |
| LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second | 18,402.65 | 17,825.31 |
| LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second | 15,748.03 | 15,969.34 |
| MSET (10 keys) per Second | 68,212.83 | 45,578.85 |
Redis Average Latency (ms)
| DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) | Linode – (4 GB) | |
|---|---|---|
| PING_INLINE | 0.51 | 0.58 |
| PING_MBULK | 0.48 | 0.61 |
| SET | 0.48 | 0.59 |
| GET | 0.47 | 0.60 |
| INCR | 0.48 | 0.59 |
| LPUSH | 0.48 | 0.58 |
| RPUSH | 0.48 | 0.60 |
| LPOP | 0.49 | 0.59 |
| RPOP | 0.48 | 0.60 |
| SADD | 0.49 | 0.60 |
| HSET | 0.48 | 0.60 |
| SPOP | 0.49 | 0.59 |
| ZADD | 0.48 | 0.59 |
| ZPOPMIN | 0.48 | 0.55 |
| LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) | 0.68 | 0.89 |
| LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) | 1.08 | 1.25 |
| LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) | 1.45 | 1.50 |
| LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) | 1.82 | 1.59 |
| MSET (10 keys) | 0.39 | 0.57 |
Conclusion
From the friendly robots:
The Linode instance outperforms the DigitalOcean Premium AMD instance in most benchmark metrics, particularly in Redis operations, CPU events per second, and file I/O throughput. The Linode instance, equipped with more powerful CPUs, exhibits higher request rates per second for various Redis commands and superior file I/O performance, with notably lower latencies and higher throughput. It also demonstrates better thread fairness in memory and CPU benchmarks. The DigitalOcean instance, however, shows nearly equivalent performance in memory latency and operations per second, indicating comparable efficiency in handling memory operations. Given these results, the Linode instance is best suited for workloads demanding high CPU performance, extensive I/O operations, and high-throughput requirements, while the DigitalOcean instance could be a preferable choice for applications that prioritize efficient memory management over CPU or I/O intensive tasks.
From the friendly human:
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