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

vs.

Fresh benchmarks coming at ya. 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 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, 08 Jul 2026 02:35:51 GMT Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:29:06 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 $16.00 $5.00
RAM (GB) 2 1
CPU Cores 1 1
Storage (TB) 70 25
Storage Type NVMe SSD
Transfer (TB) 2 1

Head-to-head

Category winners from the latest benchmarks.

CategoryWinner
CPU (events/sec)Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Memory (read MiB/s)Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Disk I/O (MiB/s)DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
MySQL (read/write tps)Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Redis (GET/sec)DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Value (CPU events per $/mo)Linode – Nanode (1 GB)

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) takes 4 of 6 categories.

CPU

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Vendor GenuineIntel AuthenticAMD
Model Name DO-Premium-Intel AMD EPYC 7713 64-Core Processor
Clock Speed (MHz) 2,494.15 2,000.00
CPU Cache Size (KB) 4,096.00 512.00
BogoMips 4,988.29 4,000.00
Events per Second 562.17 2,995.79
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.93 0.3
Average Latency (ms) 1.78 0.33
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.62 3.68
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.13 0.34

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Operations per second 4,915,996.46 5,138,712.44
Mebibytes per second 4,800.78 5,018.27
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.43 0.36
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Operations per second 4,788,946.98 5,126,038.83
Mebibytes per second 4,676.71 5,005.90
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.26 2.06
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Reads per Second 4,376.99 3,144.54
Writes per Second 2,917.99 2,096.29
Fsyncs per Second 9,337.68 6,714.53
Read Mebibytes per Second 68.39 49.13
Written Mebibytes per Second 45.59 32.75
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.06 0.08
Maximum Latency (ms) 6.27 40.23
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.21 0.19

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 1,688.69 1,726.97
Average Latency (ms) 1,696.46 1,752.52
Maximum Latency (ms) 1,701.64 1,763.59
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1,708.63 1,771.29

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 8,936.00 7,323.00
Queries per second 89,360.00 73,230.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.01 1.26
Average Latency (ms) 1.12 1.36
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.9 3.63
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.3 1.58

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 7,876.00 4,970.00
Queries per second 78,760.00 49,700.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.79 1.15
Average Latency (ms) 1.27 2.02
Maximum Latency (ms) 9.88 99.24
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.79 3.19

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 2,982.00 3,294.00
Queries per second 29,820.00 32,940.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.04 2.51
Average Latency (ms) 3.35 3.03
Maximum Latency (ms) 65.11 24.98
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 6.43 3.68

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 15,748.00 11,632.00
Queries per second 157,480.00 116,320.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.45 0.65
Average Latency (ms) 0.63 0.86
Maximum Latency (ms) 11.93 6.61
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.92 1.14

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 1,404,967.00 1,201,092.00
Queries per second 14,049,670.00 12,010,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 298.75 468.92
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 202,254.00 140,938.00
Queries per second 2,022,540.00 1,409,380.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.03 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.05 0.07
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.24 1.49
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.08 0.12

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 4,187.00 6,603.00
Queries per second 41,870.00 66,030.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.65 0.52
Average Latency (ms) 2.38 1.51
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.81 9.28
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.75 1.96

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 6,928.00 7,697.00
Queries per second 69,280.00 76,970.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.51 0.49
Average Latency (ms) 1.44 1.3
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.75 4.02
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.43 1.7

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 14,135.00 11,465.00
Queries per second 141,350.00 114,650.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.47 0.66
Average Latency (ms) 0.71 0.87
Maximum Latency (ms) 12.96 43.16
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.01 1.1

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 14,372.00 11,672.00
Queries per second 143,720.00 116,720.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.46 0.67
Average Latency (ms) 0.69 0.86
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.98 24.29
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.97 1.1

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 161,486.00 94,623.00
Queries per second 1,614,860.00 946,230.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.03 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.06 0.11
Maximum Latency (ms) 6.57 10.28
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.09 0.19

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 66,533.60 38,446.75
PING_MBULK per Second 67,159.17 38,505.97
SET per Second 61,087.36 39,123.63
GET per Second 72,568.94 38,804.81
INCR per Second 69,396.25 39,169.61
LPUSH per Second 46,168.05 39,215.69
RPUSH per Second 50,916.50 39,184.95
LPOP per Second 51,894.13 39,323.63
RPOP per Second 47,348.48 39,093.04
SADD per Second 60,060.06 38,008.36
HSET per Second 68,587.11 40,160.64
SPOP per Second 67,249.50 38,714.67
ZADD per Second 71,377.59 40,064.10
ZPOPMIN per Second 71,684.59 39,169.61
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 37,523.45 25,163.56
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 17,708.52 13,114.75
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 11,918.95 8,311.86
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 9,573.04 7,606.30
MSET (10 keys) per Second 53,248.14 37,821.48

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
PING_INLINE0.470.78
PING_MBULK0.470.78
SET0.530.79
GET0.440.77
INCR0.460.78
LPUSH0.700.79
RPUSH0.640.79
LPOP0.650.80
RPOP0.700.80
SADD0.530.81
HSET0.470.78
SPOP0.470.78
ZADD0.450.78
ZPOPMIN0.440.77
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.891.27
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.842.28
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)2.793.35
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)3.343.57
MSET (10 keys)0.760.86

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

DigitalOcean's Premium Intel instance outperforms Linode's Nanode in the benchmarks, especially in CPU-intensive tasks and memory operations, as evidenced by higher rates in Redis operations like GET (72,568.94 vs 38,804.81 requests per second) and superior file I/O throughput (68.39 vs 49.13 MiB per second). For users needing strong CPU performance and lower latency for database operations, DigitalOcean's instance is the better choice.

From the friendly human:

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