DigitalOcean Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) vs. Linode Nanode (1 GB)

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My friend, I'm so glad you're here! Today I've spun up brand new instance from DigitalOcean and Linode and ran my world famous suite of benchmarking scripts. Each instance was spun up with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and were created in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Time to see who showed up today.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Last Benchmarked Wed, 27 May 2026 14:00:53 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 $28.00 $5.00
RAM (GB) 4 1
CPU Cores 2 1
Storage (TB) 80 25
Storage Type NVMe SSD
Transfer (TB) 2 1

CPU

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) 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 3,992.50 4,599.99
Events per Second 1,225.30 1,022.23
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.64 0.61
Average Latency (ms) 0.81 0.98
Maximum Latency (ms) 44.07 5.4
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.9 2.39

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Operations per second 4,427,945.52 5,296,233.64
Mebibytes per second 4,324.17 5,172.10
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.25 3.05
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Operations per second 4,381,742.18 5,154,651.90
Mebibytes per second 4,279.05 5,033.84
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.35 3.06
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Reads per Second 1,600.05 2,055.76
Writes per Second 1,066.70 1,370.51
Fsyncs per Second 3,422.74 4,389.22
Read Mebibytes per Second 25.00 32.12
Written Mebibytes per Second 16.67 21.41
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.16 0.13
Maximum Latency (ms) 7.73 12.79
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.64 0.35

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 963.88 1,633.32
Average Latency (ms) 1,037.06 1,644.62
Maximum Latency (ms) 1,082.39 1,653.29
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1,089.30 1,648.20

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 4,956.00 7,575.00
Queries per second 49,560.00 75,750.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.47 1.22
Average Latency (ms) 2.02 1.32
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.49 4.67
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.52 1.42

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 2,779.00 5,800.00
Queries per second 27,790.00 58,000.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.66 1.15
Average Latency (ms) 3.59 1.72
Maximum Latency (ms) 40.07 12.35
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5.77 2.39

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 1,648.00 2,955.00
Queries per second 16,480.00 29,550.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 3.6 2.64
Average Latency (ms) 6.06 3.38
Maximum Latency (ms) 23.48 22.69
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 8.9 4.41

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 4,464.00 8,921.00
Queries per second 44,640.00 89,210.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.28 0.65
Average Latency (ms) 2.24 1.12
Maximum Latency (ms) 13.4 8.92
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.82 1.42

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 1,171,967.00 1,288,467.00
Queries per second 11,719,670.00 12,884,670.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 485.34 398.24
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 115,348.00 170,179.00
Queries per second 1,153,480.00 1,701,790.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.05 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.09 0.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.79 7.27
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.12 0.08

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 6,186.00 7,819.00
Queries per second 61,860.00 78,190.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.37 0.42
Average Latency (ms) 1.61 1.28
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.1 6.03
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.3 1.64

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 5,513.00 7,328.00
Queries per second 55,130.00 73,280.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.69 0.3
Average Latency (ms) 1.81 1.36
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.94 4.97
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.61 1.76

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 3,383.00 8,603.00
Queries per second 33,830.00 86,030.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.1 0.69
Average Latency (ms) 2.95 1.16
Maximum Latency (ms) 45.29 6.97
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5.28 1.7

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 4,136.00 7,719.00
Queries per second 41,360.00 77,190.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.27 0.65
Average Latency (ms) 2.42 1.29
Maximum Latency (ms) 33.45 54.76
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.82 1.73

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 26,812.00 80,451.00
Queries per second 268,120.00 804,510.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.05 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.37 0.12
Maximum Latency (ms) 12.56 16.14
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.26 0.42

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 47,664.44 44,052.86
PING_MBULK per Second 46,620.05 44,563.28
SET per Second 48,426.15 44,072.28
GET per Second 47,393.37 44,345.89
INCR per Second 45,578.85 42,535.09
LPUSH per Second 41,823.50 41,545.49
RPUSH per Second 44,603.03 37,299.52
LPOP per Second 47,058.82 43,327.55
RPOP per Second 47,915.67 43,103.45
SADD per Second 49,188.39 43,994.72
HSET per Second 46,685.34 43,956.04
SPOP per Second 46,816.48 44,130.62
ZADD per Second 45,934.77 42,390.84
ZPOPMIN per Second 46,882.33 43,159.26
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 31,505.99 28,843.38
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 20,288.09 15,153.81
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 14,450.87 10,595.47
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 12,973.53 9,122.42
MSET (10 keys) per Second 40,322.58 40,112.31

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (4 GB, 2 Cores) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
PING_INLINE0.580.78
PING_MBULK0.560.77
SET0.540.78
GET0.550.77
INCR0.570.80
LPUSH0.620.82
RPUSH0.590.90
LPOP0.560.80
RPOP0.560.80
SADD0.530.78
HSET0.570.79
SPOP0.560.77
ZADD0.600.81
ZPOPMIN0.580.79
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.901.23
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.392.38
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)1.863.44
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)2.193.96
MSET (10 keys)0.660.88

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

After comparing the benchmarks for the DigitalOcean Premium AMD and the Linode Nanode, it's evident that DigitalOcean's instance provides significantly higher performance across most metrics, notably in Redis operations, CPU events per second, and file I/O operations, indicating better handling of memory-intensive and I/O-heavy workloads. Linode's Nanode, though offering adequate performance, trails behind in most benchmarks, showing slightly higher latencies and fewer operations per second across most metrics. DigitalOcean's instance is ideal for users needing robust performance for high-traffic applications and data-intensive operations, whereas Linode's Nanode is better suited for smaller, less resource-demanding tasks.

From the friendly human:

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