DigitalOcean Regular (1 GB) vs. Linode Nanode (1 GB)

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New day, new benchmarks. Today I spun up fresh instances from DigitalOcean and Linode and ran my world famous suite of benchmarking scripts. All instances were spun up with Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 and were created in the New York area (or close to it). Time to see who showed up today.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Last Benchmarked Sat, 01 Aug 2026 05:00:48 GMT Sat, 01 Aug 2026 05:01:32 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 $6.00 $5.00
RAM (GB) 1 1
CPU Cores 1 1
Storage (TB) 25 25
Storage Type SSD SSD
Transfer (TB) 1 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)Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
MySQL (read/write tps)Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Redis (GET/sec)Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Value (CPU events per $/mo)Linode – Nanode (1 GB)

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

CPU

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Vendor GenuineIntel AuthenticAMD
Model Name DO-Regular AMD EPYC 7642 48-Core Processor
Clock Speed (MHz) 2,494.14 2,300.00
CPU Cache Size (KB) 4,096.00 512.00
BogoMips 4,988.28 4,600.00
Events per Second 815.71 1,479.09
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.98 0.65
Average Latency (ms) 1.22 0.68
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.86 4.07
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.5 0.69

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Operations per second 3,956,759.89 5,162,780.30
Mebibytes per second 3,864.02 5,041.78
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.03 1.07
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Operations per second 3,883,080.49 5,347,459.67
Mebibytes per second 3,792.07 5,222.13
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 6.51 0.26
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Reads per Second 2,180.62 2,518.00
Writes per Second 1,453.75 1,678.67
Fsyncs per Second 4,652.64 5,375.23
Read Mebibytes per Second 34.07 39.34
Written Mebibytes per Second 22.71 26.23
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.12 0.1
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.63 14.25
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.34 0.35

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 2,077.12 1,639.75
Average Latency (ms) 2,109.98 1,650.21
Maximum Latency (ms) 2,125.57 1,660.37
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2,120.76 1,648.20

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 6,111.00 9,017.00
Queries per second 61,110.00 90,170.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.13 1.02
Average Latency (ms) 1.63 1.11
Maximum Latency (ms) 16.53 5.75
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.3 1.27

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 3,456.00 8,101.00
Queries per second 34,560.00 81,010.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.3 0.87
Average Latency (ms) 2.89 1.23
Maximum Latency (ms) 17.71 11.04
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.57 1.64

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 2,206.00 3,971.00
Queries per second 22,060.00 39,710.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.57 1.98
Average Latency (ms) 4.53 2.52
Maximum Latency (ms) 12.36 17.34
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 6.55 3.07

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 6,940.00 12,157.00
Queries per second 69,400.00 121,570.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.52 0.58
Average Latency (ms) 1.43 0.82
Maximum Latency (ms) 22.94 13.14
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.57 1.12

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 1,084,592.00 1,346,717.00
Queries per second 10,845,920.00 13,467,170.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 506.06 454.87
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 160,315.00 211,595.00
Queries per second 1,603,150.00 2,115,950.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.06 0.05
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.76 3.28
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.1 0.06

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 3,209.00 6,687.00
Queries per second 32,090.00 66,870.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.96 0.46
Average Latency (ms) 3.11 1.49
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.53 5
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.57 1.93

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 5,822.00 7,633.00
Queries per second 58,220.00 76,330.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.52 0.46
Average Latency (ms) 1.71 1.31
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.33 3.52
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.86 1.73

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 9,262.00 12,921.00
Queries per second 92,620.00 129,210.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.52 0.6
Average Latency (ms) 1.08 0.77
Maximum Latency (ms) 21.4 10.21
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.82 0.99

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 8,187.00 11,621.00
Queries per second 81,870.00 116,210.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.53 0.59
Average Latency (ms) 1.22 0.86
Maximum Latency (ms) 14.67 70.33
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.18 1.3

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 79,336.00 137,539.00
Queries per second 793,360.00 1,375,390.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.13 0.07
Maximum Latency (ms) 11.85 5.83
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.34 0.1

Redis

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 44,722.72 85,324.23
PING_MBULK per Second 44,267.38 72,150.07
SET per Second 47,687.18 83,682.01
GET per Second 45,351.48 86,430.43
INCR per Second 43,535.05 85,984.52
LPUSH per Second 39,047.25 85,324.23
RPUSH per Second 37,481.26 85,543.20
LPOP per Second 40,404.04 85,034.02
RPOP per Second 38,595.14 84,961.77
SADD per Second 38,834.95 85,763.29
HSET per Second 35,932.45 84,961.77
SPOP per Second 32,000.00 85,984.52
ZADD per Second 30,750.31 85,106.38
ZPOPMIN per Second 30,854.68 86,580.09
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 24,789.29 44,782.80
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 13,390.47 21,213.41
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 8,059.32 14,192.45
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 7,098.74 11,773.02
MSET (10 keys) per Second 41,928.72 72,046.11

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
PING_INLINE0.690.37
PING_MBULK0.690.43
SET0.650.39
GET0.680.37
INCR0.710.37
LPUSH0.800.38
RPUSH0.820.38
LPOP0.780.38
RPOP0.810.38
SADD0.790.37
HSET0.860.38
SPOP0.960.37
ZADD1.010.38
ZPOPMIN1.000.37
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)1.310.80
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)2.441.61
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)3.792.49
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)4.252.96
MSET (10 keys)0.810.57

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

Linode's Nanode (1 GB) instance outperforms DigitalOcean's Regular (1 GB) in most benchmarks, particularly in Redis SET operations with 83,682 RPS compared to DigitalOcean's 47,687 RPS, and in MySQL bulk insert with 132,295 TPS versus DigitalOcean's 105,309 TPS. These decisive metrics highlight Linode's superior performance, making it more suitable for CPU-intensive or high-throughput applications, despite DigitalOcean offering slightly lower prices.

From the friendly human:

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