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

vs.

Fresh benchmarks coming at ya. Today I've got brand new instances from DigitalOcean and Linode and ran some benchmarks. All instances were running Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 and were created in the New York area (or close to it). Let's get into the numbers.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
Last Benchmarked Thu, 01 Oct 2026 05:08:17 GMT Thu, 01 Oct 2026 05:04:32 GMT
Linux Distro Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version 7.0.0-31-generic 7.0.0-34-generic
MySQL Version 8.4.11-0ubuntu0.26.04.1 8.4.11-0ubuntu0.26.04.1
Redis Version 8.0.5 8.0.5
Location New York, NY Newark, NJ
Monthly Price $16.00 $12.00
RAM (GB) 2 2
CPU Cores 1 1
Storage (TB) 70 50
Storage Type NVMe SSD
Transfer (TB) 2 2

Head-to-head

Category winners from the latest benchmarks.

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

Linode – (2 GB) takes 4 of 6 categories.

CPU

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 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 4,000.00
Events per Second 1,383.84 1,572.23
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.5 0.3
Average Latency (ms) 0.72 0.63
Maximum Latency (ms) 26.1 6.7
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.35 2.97

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
Operations per second 4,333,625.92 2,659,308.71
Mebibytes per second 4,232.06 2,596.98
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.09 8.46
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
Operations per second 4,219,640.73 2,651,904.83
Mebibytes per second 4,120.74 2,589.75
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.16 5.92
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
Reads per Second 2,349.38 3,273.88
Writes per Second 1,566.26 2,182.59
Fsyncs per Second 5,019.91 6,992.77
Read Mebibytes per Second 36.71 51.15
Written Mebibytes per Second 24.47 34.10
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.11 0.08
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.32 6.08
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.41 0.2

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 2,294.95 2,754.20
Average Latency (ms) 2,302.17 2,767.04
Maximum Latency (ms) 2,308.09 2,779.23
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2,320.55 2,778.39

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
Transactions per second 8,290.00 7,511.00
Queries per second 82,900.00 75,110.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.02 1.1
Average Latency (ms) 1.2 1.33
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.93 4.29
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.82 2.22

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
Transactions per second 4,835.00 7,676.00
Queries per second 48,350.00 76,760.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.03 0.9
Average Latency (ms) 2.06 1.3
Maximum Latency (ms) 28.71 13.19
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.86 1.76

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
Transactions per second 2,440.00 3,546.00
Queries per second 24,400.00 35,460.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.47 2.25
Average Latency (ms) 4.09 2.82
Maximum Latency (ms) 34.94 11.06
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5.77 3.3

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
Transactions per second 8,740.00 11,878.00
Queries per second 87,400.00 118,780.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.61 0.57
Average Latency (ms) 1.14 0.84
Maximum Latency (ms) 31.28 7.02
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.86 1.12

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
Transactions per second 1,201,092.00 1,550,592.00
Queries per second 12,010,920.00 15,505,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 416.59 300.1
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
Transactions per second 233,729.00 164,745.00
Queries per second 2,337,290.00 1,647,450.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.04 0.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.09 2.61
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.06 0.08

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
Transactions per second 5,487.00 7,441.00
Queries per second 54,870.00 74,410.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.53 0.43
Average Latency (ms) 1.82 1.34
Maximum Latency (ms) 7.49 5.76
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.76 1.79

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
Transactions per second 6,975.00 9,652.00
Queries per second 69,750.00 96,520.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.49 0.36
Average Latency (ms) 1.43 1.03
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.05 4.19
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.11 1.34

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
Transactions per second 8,563.00 11,734.00
Queries per second 85,630.00 117,340.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.61 0.58
Average Latency (ms) 1.17 0.85
Maximum Latency (ms) 31.11 15.77
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.86 1.16

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
Transactions per second 7,986.00 12,735.00
Queries per second 79,860.00 127,350.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.64 0.57
Average Latency (ms) 1.25 0.78
Maximum Latency (ms) 33.18 13.74
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.96 1.03

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
Transactions per second 90,875.00 104,209.00
Queries per second 908,750.00 1,042,090.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.11 0.09
Maximum Latency (ms) 22.2 224.18
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.19 0.26

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 65,876.16 43,936.73
PING_MBULK per Second 63,856.96 44,622.94
SET per Second 62,972.29 44,130.62
GET per Second 57,339.45 44,306.60
INCR per Second 61,538.46 44,863.16
LPUSH per Second 66,889.63 44,843.05
RPUSH per Second 64,892.93 45,372.05
LPOP per Second 65,359.48 44,444.45
RPOP per Second 63,572.79 44,404.97
SADD per Second 63,613.23 45,682.96
HSET per Second 66,489.37 45,351.48
SPOP per Second 54,112.55 44,583.15
ZADD per Second 65,487.89 44,702.73
ZPOPMIN per Second 64,557.78 43,802.02
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 38,895.37 32,113.04
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 18,539.12 17,768.30
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 12,931.59 12,608.75
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 11,428.57 11,558.02
MSET (10 keys) per Second 58,105.75 42,247.57

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
PING_INLINE0.480.70
PING_MBULK0.490.68
SET0.510.71
GET0.550.70
INCR0.510.70
LPUSH0.480.71
RPUSH0.490.69
LPOP0.490.72
RPOP0.500.72
SADD0.500.68
HSET0.480.70
SPOP0.590.70
ZADD0.490.71
ZPOPMIN0.490.71
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.850.98
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.721.74
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)2.592.54
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)2.862.72
MSET (10 keys)0.690.80

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The DigitalOcean Premium Intel (2 GB) instance edges out the Linode (2 GB) instance with superior Redis benchmark results, especially in SET operations with a peak rate of 65703.02 requests per second compared to Linode's 76923.08. While both instances show strong performance, DigitalOcean's consistency and slightly lower latency across multiple benchmarks make it the better choice for CPU-intensive workloads, whereas Linode excels in storage-heavy tasks and random read/write operations.

From the friendly human:

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