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

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Welcome to another round of the VPS Showdown. Today I've spun up some brand new instance from DigitalOcean and Linode and did some benchmarking. All instances were spun up with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and were created in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Let's get into the numbers.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Last Benchmarked Sun, 24 May 2026 06:00:51 GMT Sat, 23 May 2026 13:00:52 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 $6.00 $5.00
RAM (GB) 1 1
CPU Cores 1 1
Storage (TB) 25 25
Storage Type SSD SSD
Transfer (TB) 1 1

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) 2,494.17 2,300.00
CPU Cache Size (KB) 4,096.00 512.00
BogoMips 4,988.33 4,600.00
Events per Second 544.64 905.04
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.91 0.61
Average Latency (ms) 1.83 1.1
Maximum Latency (ms) 6.05 22.05
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.3 2.48

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Operations per second 3,884,147.58 5,013,583.91
Mebibytes per second 3,793.11 4,896.08
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.21 9.43
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Operations per second 3,855,342.89 4,999,712.46
Mebibytes per second 3,764.98 4,882.53
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.09 9.49
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Reads per Second 1,941.53 1,752.56
Writes per Second 1,294.36 1,168.34
Fsyncs per Second 4,148.23 3,745.40
Read Mebibytes per Second 30.34 27.38
Written Mebibytes per Second 20.22 18.26
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.13 0.15
Maximum Latency (ms) 14.04 75.52
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.37 0.42

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 2,442.65 1,654.93
Average Latency (ms) 2,474.33 1,667.46
Maximum Latency (ms) 2,494.37 1,678.80
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2,493.86 1,678.14

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 5,075.00 6,108.00
Queries per second 50,750.00 61,080.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.28 1.43
Average Latency (ms) 1.97 1.64
Maximum Latency (ms) 7.01 22.63
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.52 2

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 3,624.00 4,788.00
Queries per second 36,240.00 47,880.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.32 1.33
Average Latency (ms) 2.75 2.09
Maximum Latency (ms) 14.77 24.02
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.25 3.07

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 1,703.00 2,490.00
Queries per second 17,030.00 24,900.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 3.52 3.03
Average Latency (ms) 5.86 4.02
Maximum Latency (ms) 19.13 15.36
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 7.98 5.09

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 6,947.00 8,775.00
Queries per second 69,470.00 87,750.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.67 0.68
Average Latency (ms) 1.43 1.14
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.58 20.34
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.11 1.47

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 898,571.00 898,571.00
Queries per second 8,985,710.00 8,985,710.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 604.32 1312.33
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 134,023.00 131,900.00
Queries per second 1,340,230.00 1,319,000.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.06
Average Latency (ms) 0.07 0.08
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.96 12.86
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.12 0.11

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 3,981.00 6,799.00
Queries per second 39,810.00 67,990.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.66 0.48
Average Latency (ms) 2.51 1.47
Maximum Latency (ms) 9.61 12.9
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.55 2.03

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 4,240.00 6,912.00
Queries per second 42,400.00 69,120.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.76 0.36
Average Latency (ms) 2.35 1.45
Maximum Latency (ms) 6.72 5.54
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.36 1.93

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 5,672.00 7,586.00
Queries per second 56,720.00 75,860.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.73 0.75
Average Latency (ms) 1.76 1.32
Maximum Latency (ms) 15.81 19.75
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.97 2

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 6,657.00 7,848.00
Queries per second 66,570.00 78,480.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.61 0.7
Average Latency (ms) 1.5 1.27
Maximum Latency (ms) 11.94 23.83
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.3 1.82

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 57,603.00 61,230.00
Queries per second 576,030.00 612,300.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.06
Average Latency (ms) 0.17 0.16
Maximum Latency (ms) 18.88 19.09
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.04 0.97

Redis

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 36,496.35 38,804.81
PING_MBULK per Second 39,447.73 39,154.27
SET per Second 38,804.81 38,789.76
GET per Second 37,835.79 38,431.98
INCR per Second 38,491.14 38,971.16
LPUSH per Second 40,617.39 39,154.27
RPUSH per Second 35,893.75 38,505.97
LPOP per Second 37,664.79 38,476.34
RPOP per Second 38,774.72 38,925.65
SADD per Second 38,182.51 38,255.55
HSET per Second 34,352.46 36,737.70
SPOP per Second 34,246.57 38,925.65
ZADD per Second 36,954.91 38,580.25
ZPOPMIN per Second 40,338.84 39,603.96
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 20,593.08 26,602.82
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 8,546.28 14,660.61
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 5,492.39 10,073.54
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 5,337.03 8,647.53
MSET (10 keys) per Second 32,362.46 34,141.35

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
PING_INLINE0.910.87
PING_MBULK0.840.86
SET0.870.87
GET0.880.87
INCR0.870.86
LPUSH0.830.86
RPUSH0.930.88
LPOP0.900.88
RPOP0.870.88
SADD0.880.88
HSET0.970.91
SPOP0.960.86
ZADD0.910.88
ZPOPMIN0.830.85
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)1.751.30
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)4.182.48
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)6.483.57
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)6.654.12
MSET (10 keys)1.091.02

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

Comparing the benchmarks, the DigitalOcean Regular (1 GB) instance shows solid performance in Redis operations with high request per second (rps) and low latency, making it suitable for applications requiring high-throughput, low-latency in-memory data processing like caching systems. However, Linode's Nanode (1 GB) instance, though also performing well in Redis, excels in CPU benchmarks with higher events per second and lower average latency, indicating it could be more suitable for CPU-intensive tasks such as complex computations or high-performance web servers. The Linode instance also shows better file I/O throughput and memory operations, which might benefit applications that demand substantial data handling capabilities. Therefore, the choice between these instances would largely depend on the specific needs of the workload, favoring DigitalOcean for high-speed data operations and Linode for demanding CPU and I/O tasks.

From the friendly human:

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