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

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Welcome to another round of the VPS Showdown. Today I've spun up brand new instance from DigitalOcean and Linode and ran some benchmarks. Each instance was spun up with Ubuntu 24.04 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 (4 GB, 2 Cores) Linode – (4 GB)
Last Benchmarked Sat, 30 May 2026 09:00:52 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 $32.00 $24.00
RAM (GB) 4 4
CPU Cores 2 2
Storage (TB) 120 80
Storage Type NVMe SSD
Transfer (TB) 4 4

CPU

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) 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 1,105.91 3,444.02
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.81 0.28
Average Latency (ms) 0.9 0.29
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.58 4.83
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.94 0.3

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) Linode – (4 GB)
Operations per second 5,112,837.36 5,349,213.60
Mebibytes per second 4,993.01 5,223.84
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.29 3.16
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) Linode – (4 GB)
Operations per second 5,145,096.02 5,332,401.09
Mebibytes per second 5,024.51 5,207.42
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.1 3.25
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) Linode – (4 GB)
Reads per Second 4,269.89 3,325.24
Writes per Second 2,846.59 2,216.89
Fsyncs per Second 9,119.49 7,095.98
Read Mebibytes per Second 66.72 51.96
Written Mebibytes per Second 44.48 34.64
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.06 0.08
Maximum Latency (ms) 40.62 13.12
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.19 0.22

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) Linode – (4 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 836.55 864.93
Average Latency (ms) 845.58 931.61
Maximum Latency (ms) 853.23 968.34
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 846.57 960.30

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) Linode – (4 GB)
Transactions per second 7,445.00 5,919.00
Queries per second 74,450.00 59,190.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.09 1.29
Average Latency (ms) 1.34 1.69
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.98 8
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.82 2.03

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) Linode – (4 GB)
Transactions per second 6,283.00 5,152.00
Queries per second 62,830.00 51,520.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.82 1.22
Average Latency (ms) 1.59 1.94
Maximum Latency (ms) 11.44 24.88
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.3 2.52

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) Linode – (4 GB)
Transactions per second 3,403.00 2,609.00
Queries per second 34,030.00 26,090.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.9 2.83
Average Latency (ms) 2.94 3.83
Maximum Latency (ms) 42.51 8.83
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.18 4.74

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) Linode – (4 GB)
Transactions per second 11,338.00 7,493.00
Queries per second 113,380.00 74,930.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.46 0.73
Average Latency (ms) 0.88 1.33
Maximum Latency (ms) 26.65 15.06
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.27 1.86

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) Linode – (4 GB)
Transactions per second 1,521,467.00 1,754,467.00
Queries per second 15,214,670.00 17,544,670.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 325.46 418.75
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) Linode – (4 GB)
Transactions per second 205,893.00 130,180.00
Queries per second 2,058,930.00 1,301,800.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.03 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.05 0.08
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.03 4.63
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.06 0.1

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) Linode – (4 GB)
Transactions per second 6,754.00 8,212.00
Queries per second 67,540.00 82,120.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.55 0.33
Average Latency (ms) 1.48 1.22
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.87 11.27
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.14 2.3

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) Linode – (4 GB)
Transactions per second 6,857.00 8,956.00
Queries per second 68,570.00 89,560.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.52 0.42
Average Latency (ms) 1.46 1.12
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.85 4.66
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.39 1.44

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) Linode – (4 GB)
Transactions per second 8,465.00 7,381.00
Queries per second 84,650.00 73,810.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.49 0.81
Average Latency (ms) 1.18 1.35
Maximum Latency (ms) 14.56 8.43
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.79 1.76

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) Linode – (4 GB)
Transactions per second 12,125.00 7,379.00
Queries per second 121,250.00 73,790.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.45 0.82
Average Latency (ms) 0.82 1.35
Maximum Latency (ms) 12.17 7.2
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.21 1.73

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) Linode – (4 GB)
Transactions per second 132,912.00 58,502.00
Queries per second 1,329,120.00 585,020.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.03 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.07 0.17
Maximum Latency (ms) 9.87 8.26
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.1 1.14

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) Linode – (4 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 93,196.65 44,444.45
PING_MBULK per Second 99,009.90 42,158.52
SET per Second 97,465.88 43,725.41
GET per Second 91,324.20 43,084.88
INCR per Second 89,928.05 43,917.44
LPUSH per Second 86,355.79 44,169.61
RPUSH per Second 86,132.64 42,918.46
LPOP per Second 86,281.27 43,630.02
RPOP per Second 98,425.20 42,900.04
SADD per Second 92,678.41 43,066.32
HSET per Second 90,252.70 42,826.55
SPOP per Second 99,700.90 43,821.21
ZADD per Second 99,403.58 43,706.29
ZPOPMIN per Second 98,039.22 46,554.93
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 50,632.91 30,084.24
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 22,909.51 21,141.65
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 15,487.07 17,825.31
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 13,222.27 15,969.34
MSET (10 keys) per Second 79,113.92 45,578.85

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores) Linode – (4 GB)
PING_INLINE0.300.58
PING_MBULK0.300.61
SET0.280.59
GET0.280.60
INCR0.300.59
LPUSH0.340.58
RPUSH0.320.60
LPOP0.360.59
RPOP0.270.60
SADD0.300.60
HSET0.320.60
SPOP0.270.59
ZADD0.260.59
ZPOPMIN0.270.55
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.660.89
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.311.25
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)1.921.50
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)2.271.59
MSET (10 keys)0.390.57

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

After comparing the benchmark results from both the DigitalOcean and Linode instances, the DigitalOcean configuration generally outperformed in terms of Redis benchmark results, including both request rates and latency across various commands, indicating faster response times for common Redis operations. It also showed superior CPU, file I/O, and memory performance, which is beneficial for CPU-intensive workloads and applications that require fast I/O operations. The Linode instance, while offering competitive benchmarks, particularly excelled in certain memory operations and overall thread fairness but lagged behind in CPU and memory bandwidth benchmarks. Therefore, the DigitalOcean instance is more suitable for applications demanding high CPU and I/O performance, while the Linode instance might be better suited for memory-intensive tasks where thread fairness is a priority.

From the friendly human:

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