DigitalOcean Premium AMD (2 GB) vs. Linode Nanode (1 GB)

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My friend, I'm so glad you're here! Today I spun up fresh instances from DigitalOcean and Linode and did some benchmarking. Each instance was spun up with Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 and were created in the New York area (or close to it). Enough talk. Here's the data.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Last Benchmarked Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:38:52 GMT Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:29:06 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 $14.00 $5.00
RAM (GB) 2 1
CPU Cores 1 1
Storage (TB) 50 25
Storage Type NVMe SSD
Transfer (TB) 2 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)DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
Value (CPU events per $/mo)Linode – Nanode (1 GB)

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) takes 5 of 6 categories.

CPU

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 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 3,992.49 4,000.00
Events per Second 730.16 2,995.79
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.64 0.3
Average Latency (ms) 1.37 0.33
Maximum Latency (ms) 18.59 3.68
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.52 0.34

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Operations per second 3,123,620.54 5,138,712.44
Mebibytes per second 3,050.41 5,018.27
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.07 0.36
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Operations per second 5,224,478.37 5,126,038.83
Mebibytes per second 5,102.03 5,005.90
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.4 2.06
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Reads per Second 2,012.74 3,144.54
Writes per Second 1,341.83 2,096.29
Fsyncs per Second 4,295.05 6,714.53
Read Mebibytes per Second 31.45 49.13
Written Mebibytes per Second 20.97 32.75
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.13 0.08
Maximum Latency (ms) 16.81 40.23
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.5 0.19

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 1,660.48 1,726.97
Average Latency (ms) 1,679.64 1,752.52
Maximum Latency (ms) 1,687.90 1,763.59
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1,678.14 1,771.29

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 7,656.00 7,323.00
Queries per second 76,560.00 73,230.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.17 1.26
Average Latency (ms) 1.3 1.36
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.99 3.63
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.58 1.58

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 4,129.00 4,970.00
Queries per second 41,290.00 49,700.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.14 1.15
Average Latency (ms) 2.42 2.02
Maximum Latency (ms) 19.52 99.24
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.75 3.19

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 2,409.00 3,294.00
Queries per second 24,090.00 32,940.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.42 2.51
Average Latency (ms) 4.15 3.03
Maximum Latency (ms) 75.42 24.98
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 6.55 3.68

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 6,034.00 11,632.00
Queries per second 60,340.00 116,320.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.73 0.65
Average Latency (ms) 1.66 0.86
Maximum Latency (ms) 18.71 6.61
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.02 1.14

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 1,346,717.00 1,201,092.00
Queries per second 13,467,170.00 12,010,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 407.38 468.92
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 164,009.00 140,938.00
Queries per second 1,640,090.00 1,409,380.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.05 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.06 0.07
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.58 1.49
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.09 0.12

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 5,968.00 6,603.00
Queries per second 59,680.00 66,030.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.61 0.52
Average Latency (ms) 1.67 1.51
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.83 9.28
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.22 1.96

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 7,381.00 7,697.00
Queries per second 73,810.00 76,970.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.52 0.49
Average Latency (ms) 1.35 1.3
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.7 4.02
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.79 1.7

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 6,407.00 11,465.00
Queries per second 64,070.00 114,650.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.77 0.66
Average Latency (ms) 1.56 0.87
Maximum Latency (ms) 18.26 43.16
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.66 1.1

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 6,751.00 11,672.00
Queries per second 67,510.00 116,720.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.74 0.67
Average Latency (ms) 1.48 0.86
Maximum Latency (ms) 15.32 24.29
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.48 1.1

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 62,091.00 94,623.00
Queries per second 620,910.00 946,230.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.05 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.16 0.11
Maximum Latency (ms) 26.3 10.28
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.08 0.19

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 71,225.07 38,446.75
PING_MBULK per Second 71,225.07 38,505.97
SET per Second 68,119.89 39,123.63
GET per Second 66,401.06 38,804.81
INCR per Second 70,077.09 39,169.61
LPUSH per Second 70,422.54 39,215.69
RPUSH per Second 68,965.52 39,184.95
LPOP per Second 68,259.38 39,323.63
RPOP per Second 66,445.18 39,093.04
SADD per Second 69,492.70 38,008.36
HSET per Second 66,445.18 40,160.64
SPOP per Second 69,930.07 38,714.67
ZADD per Second 71,428.57 40,064.10
ZPOPMIN per Second 71,174.38 39,169.61
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 38,819.88 25,163.56
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 18,768.77 13,114.75
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 12,822.16 8,311.86
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 10,741.14 7,606.30
MSET (10 keys) per Second 61,387.36 37,821.48

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
PING_INLINE0.450.78
PING_MBULK0.440.78
SET0.470.79
GET0.480.77
INCR0.450.78
LPUSH0.460.79
RPUSH0.460.79
LPOP0.470.80
RPOP0.490.80
SADD0.460.81
HSET0.490.78
SPOP0.450.78
ZADD0.450.78
ZPOPMIN0.440.77
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.911.27
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.812.28
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)2.723.35
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)3.133.57
MSET (10 keys)0.650.86

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The DigitalOcean Premium AMD instance outperforms the Linode Nanode in both CPU and memory benchmarks. With a Redis SET rate of 68,119 RPS compared to Linode's 39,124 RPS, and a MySQL bulk insert TPs of 134,435 versus Linode's 119,358, DigitalOcean's instance is more suited for CPU-intensive and high-memory tasks. For users prioritizing performance over budget, DigitalOcean's instance provides superior throughput and lower latency, making it ideal for demanding applications.

From the friendly human:

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