DigitalOcean Premium Intel (1 GB) vs. Linode Linode (2 GB)

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New day, new benchmarks. Today I've got brand new instances from DigitalOcean and Linode to run some benchmarks on. Each instance was running Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 and were created in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Time to see who showed up today.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
Last Benchmarked Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:34:21 GMT Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:32:06 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 $8.00 $12.00
RAM (GB) 1 2
CPU Cores 1 1
Storage (TB) 35 50
Storage Type NVMe SSD
Transfer (TB) 1 2

Head-to-head

Category winners from the latest benchmarks.

CategoryWinner
CPU (events/sec)DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)
Memory (read MiB/s)DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)
Disk I/O (MiB/s)DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)
MySQL (read/write tps)DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)
Redis (GET/sec)DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)
Value (CPU events per $/mo)DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) takes 6 of 6 categories.

CPU

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
Vendor GenuineIntel AuthenticAMD
Model Name DO-Premium-Intel AMD EPYC 7713 64-Core Processor
Clock Speed (MHz) 1,995.31 2,000.00
CPU Cache Size (KB) 4,096.00 512.00
BogoMips 3,990.62 3,999.99
Events per Second 1,569.73 1,405.31
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.5 0.3
Average Latency (ms) 0.63 0.71
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.89 29.07
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.01 3.43

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
Operations per second 3,257,050.99 1,801,279.78
Mebibytes per second 3,180.71 1,759.06
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.04 33.18
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
Operations per second 3,792,553.48 2,032,533.72
Mebibytes per second 3,703.67 1,984.90
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.49 8.09
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
Reads per Second 2,083.32 1,746.86
Writes per Second 1,388.85 1,164.57
Fsyncs per Second 4,445.91 3,731.74
Read Mebibytes per Second 32.55 27.29
Written Mebibytes per Second 21.70 18.20
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.13 0.15
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.6 8.78
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.43 0.35

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 3,034.96 2,445.00
Average Latency (ms) 3,055.67 2,468.58
Maximum Latency (ms) 3,070.73 2,493.44
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3,095.38 2,493.86

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
Transactions per second 7,028.00 4,764.00
Queries per second 70,280.00 47,640.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.03 1.44
Average Latency (ms) 1.42 2.1
Maximum Latency (ms) 12.04 6.79
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2 2.57

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
Transactions per second 4,496.00 4,157.00
Queries per second 44,960.00 41,570.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.09 1.43
Average Latency (ms) 2.22 2.4
Maximum Latency (ms) 31.7 15.8
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.13 3.19

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
Transactions per second 2,100.00 1,872.00
Queries per second 21,000.00 18,720.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.57 3.41
Average Latency (ms) 4.76 5.34
Maximum Latency (ms) 25.06 22.82
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 6.79 7.04

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
Transactions per second 6,996.00 6,268.00
Queries per second 69,960.00 62,680.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.64 0.94
Average Latency (ms) 1.42 1.59
Maximum Latency (ms) 47.81 5.65
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.48 2.14

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
Transactions per second 964,103.00 636,443.00
Queries per second 9,641,030.00 6,364,430.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.02
Maximum Latency (ms) 564.3 796.96
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
Transactions per second 194,738.00 97,280.00
Queries per second 1,947,380.00 972,800.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.06
Average Latency (ms) 0.05 0.1
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.75 2.79
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.08 0.14

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
Transactions per second 3,978.00 4,406.00
Queries per second 39,780.00 44,060.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.71 0.67
Average Latency (ms) 2.51 2.27
Maximum Latency (ms) 7.86 10.03
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.18 3.3

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
Transactions per second 6,387.00 5,651.00
Queries per second 63,870.00 56,510.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.54 0.57
Average Latency (ms) 1.56 1.77
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.51 4.22
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.61 2.52

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
Transactions per second 4,587.00 3,320.00
Queries per second 45,870.00 33,200.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.73 0.89
Average Latency (ms) 2.18 3.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 49.21 35.11
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.49 9.39

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
Transactions per second 7,624.00 7,391.00
Queries per second 76,240.00 73,910.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.6 0.84
Average Latency (ms) 1.31 1.35
Maximum Latency (ms) 27.61 5.35
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.18 1.89

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
Transactions per second 71,987.00 39,858.00
Queries per second 719,870.00 398,580.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.06
Average Latency (ms) 0.14 0.25
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.22 7.4
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.83 1.47

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 50,581.69 18,789.93
PING_MBULK per Second 52,714.81 23,607.18
SET per Second 56,211.35 22,988.51
GET per Second 56,401.58 25,387.15
INCR per Second 59,101.65 24,073.18
LPUSH per Second 41,084.63 24,313.15
RPUSH per Second 41,186.16 24,912.80
LPOP per Second 42,643.92 25,859.84
RPOP per Second 44,642.86 24,654.83
SADD per Second 44,072.28 27,027.03
HSET per Second 46,663.56 25,419.42
SPOP per Second 47,505.94 26,082.42
ZADD per Second 41,407.87 24,931.44
ZPOPMIN per Second 34,459.00 23,963.58
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 29,446.41 18,135.65
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 13,106.16 8,966.20
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 10,968.52 5,910.17
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 8,992.00 5,628.10
MSET (10 keys) per Second 46,620.05 23,877.74

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
PING_INLINE0.631.63
PING_MBULK0.601.27
SET0.571.34
GET0.571.20
INCR0.551.27
LPUSH0.791.27
RPUSH0.781.24
LPOP0.771.20
RPOP0.731.25
SADD0.731.13
HSET0.691.21
SPOP0.671.16
ZADD0.781.24
ZPOPMIN0.911.26
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)1.141.67
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)2.483.16
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)3.004.67
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)3.514.85
MSET (10 keys)0.851.37

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The DigitalOcean Premium Intel instance excels overall with higher performance metrics across several benchmarks; notably, the HSET operation rates at 46,663.56 requests per second (rps) compared to the Linode's 25,419.42 rps, and the latency averages are also lower, showcasing superior CPU efficiency. Given these results, the DigitalOcean instance is better suited for applications that require high CPU throughput and low latency, such as CPU-intensive web applications or high-frequency trading platforms.

From the friendly human:

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