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

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New day, new benchmarks. Today I've spun up brand new instance from DigitalOcean and Linode and ran my world famous suite of benchmarking scripts. All instances were running Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and all resided in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Time to see who showed up today.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Last Benchmarked Wed, 27 May 2026 21:00:52 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 $16.00 $5.00
RAM (GB) 2 1
CPU Cores 1 1
Storage (TB) 70 25
Storage Type NVMe SSD
Transfer (TB) 2 1

CPU

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Vendor GenuineIntel AuthenticAMD
Model Name DO-Premium-Intel AMD EPYC 7642 48-Core Processor
Clock Speed (MHz) 2,494.14 2,300.00
CPU Cache Size (KB) 4,096.00 512.00
BogoMips 4,988.27 4,599.99
Events per Second 470.48 1,022.23
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.91 0.61
Average Latency (ms) 2.12 0.98
Maximum Latency (ms) 7.32 5.4
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.36 2.39

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Operations per second 2,670,229.15 5,296,233.64
Mebibytes per second 2,607.65 5,172.10
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.51 3.05
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Operations per second 4,013,109.77 5,154,651.90
Mebibytes per second 3,919.05 5,033.84
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.47 3.06
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Reads per Second 2,286.01 2,055.76
Writes per Second 1,523.97 1,370.51
Fsyncs per Second 4,885.35 4,389.22
Read Mebibytes per Second 35.72 32.12
Written Mebibytes per Second 23.81 21.41
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.11 0.13
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.62 12.79
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.32 0.35

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 2,382.99 1,633.32
Average Latency (ms) 2,411.23 1,644.62
Maximum Latency (ms) 2,423.14 1,653.29
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2,405.65 1,648.20

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 4,963.00 7,575.00
Queries per second 49,630.00 75,750.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.11 1.22
Average Latency (ms) 2.01 1.32
Maximum Latency (ms) 20.11 4.67
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.66 1.42

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 3,036.00 5,800.00
Queries per second 30,360.00 58,000.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.37 1.15
Average Latency (ms) 3.29 1.72
Maximum Latency (ms) 20.76 12.35
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 6.32 2.39

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 1,890.00 2,955.00
Queries per second 18,900.00 29,550.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.84 2.64
Average Latency (ms) 5.28 3.38
Maximum Latency (ms) 22.86 22.69
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 7.98 4.41

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 5,811.00 8,921.00
Queries per second 58,110.00 89,210.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.59 0.65
Average Latency (ms) 1.71 1.12
Maximum Latency (ms) 17.03 8.92
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.02 1.42

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 931,337.00 1,288,467.00
Queries per second 9,313,370.00 12,884,670.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 479.18 398.24
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 158,009.00 170,179.00
Queries per second 1,580,090.00 1,701,790.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.06 0.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.59 7.27
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.1 0.08

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 3,771.00 7,819.00
Queries per second 37,710.00 78,190.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.76 0.42
Average Latency (ms) 2.65 1.28
Maximum Latency (ms) 14.47 6.03
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.62 1.64

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 4,045.00 7,328.00
Queries per second 40,450.00 73,280.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.71 0.3
Average Latency (ms) 2.47 1.36
Maximum Latency (ms) 11.21 4.97
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.62 1.76

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 3,507.00 8,603.00
Queries per second 35,070.00 86,030.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.81 0.69
Average Latency (ms) 2.85 1.16
Maximum Latency (ms) 23.95 6.97
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5.99 1.7

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 4,817.00 7,719.00
Queries per second 48,170.00 77,190.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.61 0.65
Average Latency (ms) 2.07 1.29
Maximum Latency (ms) 22.28 54.76
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.1 1.73

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 51,922.00 80,451.00
Queries per second 519,220.00 804,510.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.19 0.12
Maximum Latency (ms) 14.99 16.14
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.14 0.42

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 44,345.89 44,052.86
PING_MBULK per Second 50,100.20 44,563.28
SET per Second 48,007.68 44,072.28
GET per Second 45,351.48 44,345.89
INCR per Second 46,125.46 42,535.09
LPUSH per Second 50,658.56 41,545.49
RPUSH per Second 50,377.83 37,299.52
LPOP per Second 47,236.65 43,327.55
RPOP per Second 47,192.07 43,103.45
SADD per Second 49,950.05 43,994.72
HSET per Second 50,890.59 43,956.04
SPOP per Second 50,607.29 44,130.62
ZADD per Second 45,955.88 42,390.84
ZPOPMIN per Second 52,826.20 43,159.26
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 23,529.41 28,843.38
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 10,121.46 15,153.81
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 6,379.99 10,595.47
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 5,351.89 9,122.42
MSET (10 keys) per Second 41,823.50 40,112.31

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
PING_INLINE0.780.78
PING_MBULK0.680.77
SET0.720.78
GET0.760.77
INCR0.750.80
LPUSH0.680.82
RPUSH0.680.90
LPOP0.740.80
RPOP0.740.80
SADD0.690.78
HSET0.680.79
SPOP0.680.77
ZADD0.760.81
ZPOPMIN0.640.79
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)1.561.23
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)3.662.38
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)5.733.44
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)6.803.96
MSET (10 keys)0.880.88

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

Both DigitalOcean's Premium Intel (2 GB) and Linode's Nanode (1 GB) instances perform robustly, but they cater to slightly different use cases. The DigitalOcean instance offers superior performance in I/O-intensive tasks, with higher throughput and lower latency for both read and write operations. It also excels in CPU-bound operations and has better fairness in thread execution. Conversely, the Linode instance, while featuring slightly better CPU metrics, struggles more with memory and file I/O operations. Given these insights, DigitalOcean's instance is ideal for workloads that require high I/O efficiency, while Linode's better CPU performance makes it a viable choice for CPU-intensive applications.

From the friendly human:

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