DigitalOcean Premium Intel (2 GB) vs. Linode Linode (4 GB)

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New day, new benchmarks. Today I've spun up some brand new instance from DigitalOcean and Linode and ran some benchmarks. Each instance was running Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and all resided in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Let's get into the numbers.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – (4 GB)
Last Benchmarked Sat, 30 May 2026 22:00:52 GMT Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:52 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 $16.00 $24.00
RAM (GB) 2 4
CPU Cores 1 2
Storage (TB) 70 80
Storage Type NVMe SSD
Transfer (TB) 2 4

CPU

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – (4 GB)
Vendor GenuineIntel AuthenticAMD
Model Name DO-Premium-Intel AMD EPYC 7713 64-Core Processor
Clock Speed (MHz) 2,494.14 2,000.00
CPU Cache Size (KB) 4,096.00 512.00
BogoMips 4,988.28 3,999.99
Events per Second 495.64 3,444.02
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.91 0.28
Average Latency (ms) 2.01 0.29
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.47 4.83
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.19 0.3

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – (4 GB)
Operations per second 3,562,900.21 5,349,213.60
Mebibytes per second 3,479.39 5,223.84
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.78 3.16
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – (4 GB)
Operations per second 4,559,986.14 5,332,401.09
Mebibytes per second 4,453.11 5,207.42
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.03 3.25
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – (4 GB)
Reads per Second 2,991.18 3,325.24
Writes per Second 1,994.09 2,216.89
Fsyncs per Second 6,381.40 7,095.98
Read Mebibytes per Second 46.74 51.96
Written Mebibytes per Second 31.16 34.64
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.09 0.08
Maximum Latency (ms) 9.55 13.12
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.25 0.22

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – (4 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 2,305.94 864.93
Average Latency (ms) 2,325.82 931.61
Maximum Latency (ms) 2,341.18 968.34
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2,320.55 960.30

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – (4 GB)
Transactions per second 5,642.00 5,919.00
Queries per second 56,420.00 59,190.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.09 1.29
Average Latency (ms) 1.77 1.69
Maximum Latency (ms) 7.6 8
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.26 2.03

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – (4 GB)
Transactions per second 6,500.00 5,152.00
Queries per second 65,000.00 51,520.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.69 1.22
Average Latency (ms) 1.54 1.94
Maximum Latency (ms) 18.05 24.88
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.07 2.52

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – (4 GB)
Transactions per second 2,286.00 2,609.00
Queries per second 22,860.00 26,090.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.63 2.83
Average Latency (ms) 4.37 3.83
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.8 8.83
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5.88 4.74

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – (4 GB)
Transactions per second 8,299.00 7,493.00
Queries per second 82,990.00 74,930.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.48 0.73
Average Latency (ms) 1.2 1.33
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.9 15.06
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.93 1.86

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – (4 GB)
Transactions per second 964,103.00 1,754,467.00
Queries per second 9,641,030.00 17,544,670.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 474.48 418.75
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – (4 GB)
Transactions per second 181,396.00 130,180.00
Queries per second 1,813,960.00 1,301,800.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.05 0.08
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.44 4.63
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.08 0.1

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – (4 GB)
Transactions per second 8,155.00 8,212.00
Queries per second 81,550.00 82,120.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.47 0.33
Average Latency (ms) 1.22 1.22
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.12 11.27
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.58 2.3

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – (4 GB)
Transactions per second 8,540.00 8,956.00
Queries per second 85,400.00 89,560.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.33 0.42
Average Latency (ms) 1.17 1.12
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.83 4.66
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.52 1.44

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – (4 GB)
Transactions per second 7,509.00 7,381.00
Queries per second 75,090.00 73,810.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.5 0.81
Average Latency (ms) 1.33 1.35
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.77 8.43
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.26 1.76

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – (4 GB)
Transactions per second 9,508.00 7,379.00
Queries per second 95,080.00 73,790.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.46 0.82
Average Latency (ms) 1.05 1.35
Maximum Latency (ms) 11.78 7.2
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.52 1.73

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – (4 GB)
Transactions per second 85,917.00 58,502.00
Queries per second 859,170.00 585,020.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.03 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.12 0.17
Maximum Latency (ms) 7.24 8.26
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.29 1.14

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – (4 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 83,263.95 44,444.45
PING_MBULK per Second 86,880.97 42,158.52
SET per Second 82,987.55 43,725.41
GET per Second 85,616.44 43,084.88
INCR per Second 84,674.01 43,917.44
LPUSH per Second 82,781.46 44,169.61
RPUSH per Second 84,530.86 42,918.46
LPOP per Second 82,781.46 43,630.02
RPOP per Second 81,967.21 42,900.04
SADD per Second 84,317.03 43,066.32
HSET per Second 76,923.08 42,826.55
SPOP per Second 86,058.52 43,821.21
ZADD per Second 82,034.45 43,706.29
ZPOPMIN per Second 84,817.64 46,554.93
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 42,176.30 30,084.24
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 19,331.14 21,141.65
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 12,430.08 17,825.31
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 10,767.74 15,969.34
MSET (10 keys) per Second 72,886.30 45,578.85

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) Linode – (4 GB)
PING_INLINE0.390.58
PING_MBULK0.370.61
SET0.390.59
GET0.380.60
INCR0.380.59
LPUSH0.390.58
RPUSH0.390.60
LPOP0.400.59
RPOP0.400.60
SADD0.390.60
HSET0.420.60
SPOP0.380.59
ZADD0.400.59
ZPOPMIN0.380.55
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.860.89
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.911.25
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)2.951.50
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)3.391.59
MSET (10 keys)0.480.57

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The DigitalOcean Premium Intel (2 GB) instance offers impressive Redis throughput, especially for simple operations like SET and GET, with a high requests per second (rps) and low latency, making it a great choice for memory-intensive, low-latency workloads. However, it struggles with more complex Redis commands like LRANGE, where response times are significantly higher. The Linode (4 GB) instance, equipped with a powerful AMD EPYC processor, provides substantially higher cpu and memory benchmarks, offering better overall performance, especially in CPU-intensive and I/O-heavy tasks, with lower latencies and higher throughput rates. It is well-suited for applications requiring more computational power and better handling of larger data sets. In summary, the DigitalOcean instance shines for straightforward, Redis-based tasks, while the Linode instance excels in demanding CPU and memory operations.

From the friendly human:

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