DigitalOcean Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) vs. Linode Linode (2 GB)

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Welcome to another round of the VPS Showdown. Today I've spun up some brand new instance from DigitalOcean and Linode to run some benchmarks on. Each instance was running Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and all resided in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Enough talk. Here's the data.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (2 GB)
Last Benchmarked Sun, 31 May 2026 20:00:52 GMT Mon, 01 Jun 2026 15:00:52 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 $56.00 $12.00
RAM (GB) 8 2
CPU Cores 4 1
Storage (TB) 160 50
Storage Type NVMe SSD
Transfer (TB) 5 2

CPU

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (2 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 4,000.00
Events per Second 1,535.42 1,678.52
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.59 0.28
Average Latency (ms) 0.65 0.59
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.89 9.24
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.69 2.81

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (2 GB)
Operations per second 4,867,578.39 2,645,654.09
Mebibytes per second 4,753.49 2,583.65
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.19 6.1
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (2 GB)
Operations per second 4,347,879.44 2,626,766.86
Mebibytes per second 4,245.98 2,565.20
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.56 6.15
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (2 GB)
Reads per Second 2,384.51 2,287.26
Writes per Second 1,589.67 1,524.77
Fsyncs per Second 5,095.64 4,881.82
Read Mebibytes per Second 37.26 35.74
Written Mebibytes per Second 24.84 23.82
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.11 0.11
Maximum Latency (ms) 9.42 5.87
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.58 0.34

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (2 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 325.10 1,654.99
Average Latency (ms) 435.66 1,663.47
Maximum Latency (ms) 487.90 1,670.46
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 484.44 1,678.14

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (2 GB)
Transactions per second 5,392.00 7,825.00
Queries per second 53,920.00 78,250.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.37 1.14
Average Latency (ms) 1.85 1.28
Maximum Latency (ms) 3 5.27
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.35 1.5

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (2 GB)
Transactions per second 3,296.00 5,536.00
Queries per second 32,960.00 55,360.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.47 1.14
Average Latency (ms) 3.03 1.8
Maximum Latency (ms) 19.45 6.57
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.41 2.39

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (2 GB)
Transactions per second 1,930.00 2,901.00
Queries per second 19,300.00 29,010.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 3.41 2.49
Average Latency (ms) 5.18 3.44
Maximum Latency (ms) 26.77 8.33
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 6.55 4.25

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (2 GB)
Transactions per second 4,756.00 8,340.00
Queries per second 47,560.00 83,400.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.08 0.67
Average Latency (ms) 2.1 1.2
Maximum Latency (ms) 40.66 5.42
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.25 1.55

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (2 GB)
Transactions per second 1,434,092.00 1,434,092.00
Queries per second 14,340,920.00 14,340,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 418.16 351.06
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (2 GB)
Transactions per second 125,686.00 174,599.00
Queries per second 1,256,860.00 1,745,990.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.05 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.08 0.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.84 3.6
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.11 0.07

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (2 GB)
Transactions per second 7,055.00 9,155.00
Queries per second 70,550.00 91,550.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.33 0.36
Average Latency (ms) 1.42 1.09
Maximum Latency (ms) 7.12 4.69
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.07 1.44

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (2 GB)
Transactions per second 6,592.00 8,799.00
Queries per second 65,920.00 87,990.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.43 0.3
Average Latency (ms) 1.52 1.13
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.28 4.2
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.03 2.26

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (2 GB)
Transactions per second 5,138.00 6,915.00
Queries per second 51,380.00 69,150.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.07 0.69
Average Latency (ms) 1.94 1.44
Maximum Latency (ms) 39.78 38.35
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.81 2.14

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (2 GB)
Transactions per second 4,781.00 8,030.00
Queries per second 47,810.00 80,300.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.13 0.68
Average Latency (ms) 2.09 1.24
Maximum Latency (ms) 19.23 5.88
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.07 1.64

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (2 GB)
Transactions per second 41,513.00 75,134.00
Queries per second 415,130.00 751,340.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.05 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.24 0.13
Maximum Latency (ms) 11.7 5.6
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.67 0.77

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (2 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 62,073.25 37,369.21
PING_MBULK per Second 58,719.91 37,921.88
SET per Second 54,171.18 37,936.27
GET per Second 64,308.68 37,693.18
INCR per Second 55,648.30 37,523.45
LPUSH per Second 55,493.89 37,921.88
RPUSH per Second 52,938.06 36,075.04
LPOP per Second 62,539.09 37,285.61
RPOP per Second 66,269.05 37,993.92
SADD per Second 62,189.05 37,664.79
HSET per Second 55,157.20 37,565.74
SPOP per Second 54,674.69 38,182.51
ZADD per Second 55,035.77 37,750.09
ZPOPMIN per Second 55,035.77 37,299.52
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 37,355.25 26,048.45
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 21,715.53 15,156.11
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 16,084.93 10,071.51
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 14,990.26 9,412.65
MSET (10 keys) per Second 57,770.08 34,317.09

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (2 GB)
PING_INLINE0.420.87
PING_MBULK0.440.86
SET0.480.87
GET0.400.87
INCR0.470.88
LPUSH0.470.88
RPUSH0.490.94
LPOP0.420.90
RPOP0.390.89
SADD0.420.89
HSET0.470.90
SPOP0.470.88
ZADD0.480.89
ZPOPMIN0.470.90
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.781.30
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.262.19
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)1.713.30
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)1.913.57
MSET (10 keys)0.470.98

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

In comparing the DigitalOcean Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) and Linode (2 GB) instances, it's clear that the DigitalOcean instance offers substantially higher CPU, memory, and network performance, as evidenced by the significantly higher RPS (requests per second) and lower latencies across a wide range of benchmark metrics, especially in Redis operations and MySQL database tasks. While the Linode instance boasts higher thread fairness and lower average latency in specific operations, it is ultimately outperformed in terms of throughput, CPU utilization, and overall responsiveness. Therefore, the DigitalOcean instance is better suited for CPU-intensive, memory-demanding, and I/O-heavy workloads, whereas the Linode instance may be more appropriate for smaller-scale applications requiring less computational power and memory.

From the friendly human:

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