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

vs.

Same showdown, different day. Today I've spun up some brand new instance from DigitalOcean and Linode and ran my world famous suite of benchmarking scripts. Each instance was running Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and were created in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Without further ado, here's the results.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (8 GB)
Last Benchmarked Sun, 31 May 2026 20:00:52 GMT Mon, 01 Jun 2026 03:00:52 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 $48.00
RAM (GB) 8 8
CPU Cores 4 4
Storage (TB) 160 160
Storage Type NVMe SSD
Transfer (TB) 5 5

CPU

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (8 GB)
Vendor AuthenticAMD AuthenticAMD
Model Name DO-Premium-AMD AMD EPYC 7542 32-Core Processor
Clock Speed (MHz) 1,996.25 2,900.00
CPU Cache Size (KB) 512.00 512.00
BogoMips 3,992.50 5,799.99
Events per Second 1,535.42 1,661.57
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.59 0.58
Average Latency (ms) 0.65 0.6
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.89 3.57
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.69 0.63

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (8 GB)
Operations per second 4,867,578.39 5,533,114.95
Mebibytes per second 4,753.49 5,403.43
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.19 1.96
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (8 GB)
Operations per second 4,347,879.44 5,426,984.96
Mebibytes per second 4,245.98 5,299.79
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.56 4
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (8 GB)
Reads per Second 2,384.51 5,520.56
Writes per Second 1,589.67 3,680.37
Fsyncs per Second 5,095.64 11,779.39
Read Mebibytes per Second 37.26 86.26
Written Mebibytes per Second 24.84 57.51
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.11 0.05
Maximum Latency (ms) 9.42 3.48
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.58 0.17

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (8 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 325.10 296.37
Average Latency (ms) 435.66 381.09
Maximum Latency (ms) 487.90 428.18
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 484.44 427.07

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (8 GB)
Transactions per second 5,392.00 6,942.00
Queries per second 53,920.00 69,420.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.37 1.2
Average Latency (ms) 1.85 1.44
Maximum Latency (ms) 3 4.62
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.35 1.58

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (8 GB)
Transactions per second 3,296.00 6,324.00
Queries per second 32,960.00 63,240.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.47 1.02
Average Latency (ms) 3.03 1.58
Maximum Latency (ms) 19.45 22.06
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.41 2.07

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (8 GB)
Transactions per second 1,930.00 3,352.00
Queries per second 19,300.00 33,520.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 3.41 2.25
Average Latency (ms) 5.18 2.98
Maximum Latency (ms) 26.77 6.85
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 6.55 3.49

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (8 GB)
Transactions per second 4,756.00 8,779.00
Queries per second 47,560.00 87,790.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.08 0.7
Average Latency (ms) 2.1 1.14
Maximum Latency (ms) 40.66 14.61
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.25 1.42

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (8 GB)
Transactions per second 1,434,092.00 1,783,592.00
Queries per second 14,340,920.00 17,835,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 418.16 292.01
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (8 GB)
Transactions per second 125,686.00 160,295.00
Queries per second 1,256,860.00 1,602,950.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.05 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.08 0.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.84 3.19
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.11 0.08

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (8 GB)
Transactions per second 7,055.00 9,140.00
Queries per second 70,550.00 91,400.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.33 0.4
Average Latency (ms) 1.42 1.09
Maximum Latency (ms) 7.12 4.24
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.07 1.39

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (8 GB)
Transactions per second 6,592.00 7,642.00
Queries per second 65,920.00 76,420.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.43 0.47
Average Latency (ms) 1.52 1.31
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.28 4.75
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.03 1.67

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (8 GB)
Transactions per second 5,138.00 9,081.00
Queries per second 51,380.00 90,810.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.07 0.68
Average Latency (ms) 1.94 1.1
Maximum Latency (ms) 39.78 4.8
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.81 1.3

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (8 GB)
Transactions per second 4,781.00 7,997.00
Queries per second 47,810.00 79,970.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.13 0.67
Average Latency (ms) 2.09 1.25
Maximum Latency (ms) 19.23 23.14
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.07 1.67

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (8 GB)
Transactions per second 41,513.00 93,716.00
Queries per second 415,130.00 937,160.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.05 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.24 0.11
Maximum Latency (ms) 11.7 6.7
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.67 0.12

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (8 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 62,073.25 61,728.39
PING_MBULK per Second 58,719.91 60,204.70
SET per Second 54,171.18 61,957.87
GET per Second 64,308.68 61,199.51
INCR per Second 55,648.30 62,266.50
LPUSH per Second 55,493.89 62,695.92
RPUSH per Second 52,938.06 67,159.17
LPOP per Second 62,539.09 62,460.96
RPOP per Second 66,269.05 60,606.06
SADD per Second 62,189.05 60,716.46
HSET per Second 55,157.20 60,532.69
SPOP per Second 54,674.69 60,679.61
ZADD per Second 55,035.77 61,804.70
ZPOPMIN per Second 55,035.77 61,425.06
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 37,355.25 49,236.83
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 21,715.53 27,839.64
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 16,084.93 20,614.31
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 14,990.26 16,931.93
MSET (10 keys) per Second 57,770.08 64,766.84

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (8 GB)
PING_INLINE0.420.42
PING_MBULK0.440.43
SET0.480.42
GET0.400.42
INCR0.470.41
LPUSH0.470.41
RPUSH0.490.38
LPOP0.420.41
RPOP0.390.43
SADD0.420.43
HSET0.470.43
SPOP0.470.43
ZADD0.480.42
ZPOPMIN0.470.42
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.780.52
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.260.93
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)1.711.25
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)1.911.52
MSET (10 keys)0.470.40

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

In benchmarking, the DigitalOcean Premium AMD instance shows slightly better performance in Redis operations, MySQL OLTP, and memory operations, with a maximum monthly cost of $56. In contrast, the Linode g6-standard-4 instance has superior CPU performance metrics, higher throughput in file I/O operations, and faster Redis commands, though it costs $48 per month. The DigitalOcean instance is optimized for MySQL operations and has better thread fairness, making it ideal for workloads that rely heavily on memory and database interactions. The Linode instance excels in CPU-intensive and I/O-heavy tasks due to its higher throughput and better CPU metrics, making it a better choice for such demanding applications. Ultimately, the choice depends on the specific needs of your workload, balancing between cost and performance requirements.

From the friendly human:

If you found this VPS Showdown helpful in your search for a hosting provider, please consider supporting my efforts by signing up using my referral links for DigitalOcean and Linode.

You can also support me directly by buying me a coffee.