DigitalOcean Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) vs. Linode Linode (4 GB)

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Fresh benchmarks coming at ya. 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 were created in the New York area (or close to it). Without further ado, here's the results.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (4 GB)
Last Benchmarked Sat, 30 May 2026 03:00:52 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 $64.00 $24.00
RAM (GB) 8 4
CPU Cores 4 2
Storage (TB) 240 80
Storage Type NVMe SSD
Transfer (TB) 6 4

CPU

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 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 1,067.58 3,444.02
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.86 0.28
Average Latency (ms) 0.94 0.29
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.68 4.83
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.03 0.3

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (4 GB)
Operations per second 4,962,098.07 5,349,213.60
Mebibytes per second 4,845.80 5,223.84
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.1 3.16
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (4 GB)
Operations per second 5,005,918.51 5,332,401.09
Mebibytes per second 4,888.59 5,207.42
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.09 3.25
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (4 GB)
Reads per Second 9,396.04 3,325.24
Writes per Second 6,264.02 2,216.89
Fsyncs per Second 20,051.77 7,095.98
Read Mebibytes per Second 146.81 51.96
Written Mebibytes per Second 97.88 34.64
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.03 0.08
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.33 13.12
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.1 0.22

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (4 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 381.71 864.93
Average Latency (ms) 452.26 931.61
Maximum Latency (ms) 498.45 968.34
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 502.20 960.30

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (4 GB)
Transactions per second 7,950.00 5,919.00
Queries per second 79,500.00 59,190.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.1 1.29
Average Latency (ms) 1.26 1.69
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.52 8
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.42 2.03

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (4 GB)
Transactions per second 7,271.00 5,152.00
Queries per second 72,710.00 51,520.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.81 1.22
Average Latency (ms) 1.37 1.94
Maximum Latency (ms) 30.71 24.88
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.76 2.52

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (4 GB)
Transactions per second 3,565.00 2,609.00
Queries per second 35,650.00 26,090.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.94 2.83
Average Latency (ms) 2.8 3.83
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.67 8.83
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.75 4.74

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (4 GB)
Transactions per second 13,100.00 7,493.00
Queries per second 131,000.00 74,930.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.45 0.73
Average Latency (ms) 0.76 1.33
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.99 15.06
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.06 1.86

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (4 GB)
Transactions per second 1,637,967.00 1,754,467.00
Queries per second 16,379,670.00 17,544,670.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 312.48 418.75
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (4 GB)
Transactions per second 205,531.00 130,180.00
Queries per second 2,055,310.00 1,301,800.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.03 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.05 0.08
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.57 4.63
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.06 0.1

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (4 GB)
Transactions per second 7,411.00 8,212.00
Queries per second 74,110.00 82,120.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.43 0.33
Average Latency (ms) 1.35 1.22
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.18 11.27
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.73 2.3

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (4 GB)
Transactions per second 7,339.00 8,956.00
Queries per second 73,390.00 89,560.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.38 0.42
Average Latency (ms) 1.36 1.12
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.34 4.66
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.76 1.44

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (4 GB)
Transactions per second 12,452.00 7,381.00
Queries per second 124,520.00 73,810.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.47 0.81
Average Latency (ms) 0.8 1.35
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.95 8.43
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.14 1.76

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (4 GB)
Transactions per second 12,648.00 7,379.00
Queries per second 126,480.00 73,790.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.46 0.82
Average Latency (ms) 0.79 1.35
Maximum Latency (ms) 9.22 7.2
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.1 1.73

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (4 GB)
Transactions per second 129,049.00 58,502.00
Queries per second 1,290,490.00 585,020.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.03 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.08 0.17
Maximum Latency (ms) 6.84 8.26
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.09 1.14

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (4 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 97,087.38 44,444.45
PING_MBULK per Second 105,263.16 42,158.52
SET per Second 97,465.88 43,725.41
GET per Second 94,966.77 43,084.88
INCR per Second 98,522.17 43,917.44
LPUSH per Second 102,564.10 44,169.61
RPUSH per Second 102,040.81 42,918.46
LPOP per Second 93,545.37 43,630.02
RPOP per Second 99,601.60 42,900.04
SADD per Second 103,519.66 43,066.32
HSET per Second 100,401.61 42,826.55
SPOP per Second 99,304.87 43,821.21
ZADD per Second 100,806.45 43,706.29
ZPOPMIN per Second 100,401.61 46,554.93
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 55,679.29 30,084.24
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 30,003.00 21,141.65
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 20,546.54 17,825.31
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 17,214.67 15,969.34
MSET (10 keys) per Second 93,109.87 45,578.85

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – (4 GB)
PING_INLINE0.340.58
PING_MBULK0.280.61
SET0.360.59
GET0.330.60
INCR0.300.59
LPUSH0.330.58
RPUSH0.340.60
LPOP0.470.59
RPOP0.430.60
SADD0.300.60
HSET0.350.60
SPOP0.330.59
ZADD0.360.59
ZPOPMIN0.310.55
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.740.89
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.051.25
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)1.371.50
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)1.601.59
MSET (10 keys)0.310.57

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

In comparison, the DigitalOcean Premium Intel instance demonstrates superior overall performance across various benchmarks, especially in CPU and memory operations, showcasing higher request per second (rps) rates and lower latency across Redis operations and file I/O tasks. The Linode instance, despite its AMD EPYC processor, lags behind in most metrics due to lower CPU cores and RAM. However, the Linode instance is more budget-friendly, but its performance is notably lower in terms of processing power, making the DigitalOcean instance ideal for CPU-intensive and I/O-heavy workloads, while the Linode might be better suited for less demanding applications with a focus on cost efficiency.

From the friendly human:

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