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

vs.

My friend, I'm so glad you're here! Today I spun up fresh instances from DigitalOcean and Linode to run some benchmarks on. All instances were spun up with Ubuntu 26.04 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 Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:28:23 GMT Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:29:06 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 7713 64-Core Processor
Clock Speed (MHz) 2,294.60 2,000.00
CPU Cache Size (KB) 4,096.00 512.00
BogoMips 4,589.20 4,000.00
Events per Second 843.27 2,995.79
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.05 0.3
Average Latency (ms) 1.18 0.33
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.34 3.68
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.47 0.34

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Operations per second 3,368,867.41 5,138,712.44
Mebibytes per second 3,289.91 5,018.27
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.83 0.36
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Operations per second 3,248,162.62 5,126,038.83
Mebibytes per second 3,172.03 5,005.90
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.26 2.06
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Reads per Second 545.13 3,144.54
Writes per Second 363.42 2,096.29
Fsyncs per Second 1,169.66 6,714.53
Read Mebibytes per Second 8.52 49.13
Written Mebibytes per Second 5.68 32.75
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.48 0.08
Maximum Latency (ms) 78.76 40.23
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.79 0.19

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 2,099.34 1,726.97
Average Latency (ms) 2,145.49 1,752.52
Maximum Latency (ms) 2,160.95 1,763.59
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2,159.29 1,771.29

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 5,001.00 7,323.00
Queries per second 50,010.00 73,230.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.21 1.26
Average Latency (ms) 2 1.36
Maximum Latency (ms) 17.66 3.63
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.66 1.58

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 738.00 4,970.00
Queries per second 7,380.00 49,700.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 4.83 1.15
Average Latency (ms) 13.55 2.02
Maximum Latency (ms) 58.05 99.24
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 25.28 3.19

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 613.00 3,294.00
Queries per second 6,130.00 32,940.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 7.34 2.51
Average Latency (ms) 16.32 3.03
Maximum Latency (ms) 67.72 24.98
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 30.81 3.68

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 1,035.00 11,632.00
Queries per second 10,350.00 116,320.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 3.79 0.65
Average Latency (ms) 9.65 0.86
Maximum Latency (ms) 48.93 6.61
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 16.71 1.14

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 734,741.00 1,201,092.00
Queries per second 7,347,410.00 12,010,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 888.59 468.92
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 128,886.00 140,938.00
Queries per second 1,288,860.00 1,409,380.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.05 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.08 0.07
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.52 1.49
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.12 0.12

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 2,691.00 6,603.00
Queries per second 26,910.00 66,030.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.22 0.52
Average Latency (ms) 3.71 1.51
Maximum Latency (ms) 15.34 9.28
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5.28 1.96

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 3,433.00 7,697.00
Queries per second 34,330.00 76,970.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.79 0.49
Average Latency (ms) 2.91 1.3
Maximum Latency (ms) 7.06 4.02
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5 1.7

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 1,000.00 11,465.00
Queries per second 10,000.00 114,650.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 3.62 0.66
Average Latency (ms) 9.99 0.87
Maximum Latency (ms) 38.48 43.16
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 18.28 1.1

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 835.00 11,672.00
Queries per second 8,350.00 116,720.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 3.33 0.67
Average Latency (ms) 11.98 0.86
Maximum Latency (ms) 340.24 24.29
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 24.38 1.1

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 3,488.00 94,623.00
Queries per second 34,880.00 946,230.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 2.87 0.11
Maximum Latency (ms) 57.43 10.28
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 14.73 0.19

Redis

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 32,051.28 38,446.75
PING_MBULK per Second 29,629.63 38,505.97
SET per Second 30,571.69 39,123.63
GET per Second 26,511.13 38,804.81
INCR per Second 36,469.73 39,169.61
LPUSH per Second 26,709.40 39,215.69
RPUSH per Second 23,741.69 39,184.95
LPOP per Second 29,700.03 39,323.63
RPOP per Second 28,985.51 39,093.04
SADD per Second 29,700.03 38,008.36
HSET per Second 29,770.77 40,160.64
SPOP per Second 28,473.80 38,714.67
ZADD per Second 29,806.26 40,064.10
ZPOPMIN per Second 31,104.20 39,169.61
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 17,519.27 25,163.56
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 7,340.53 13,114.75
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 5,113.52 8,311.86
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 4,561.42 7,606.30
MSET (10 keys) per Second 30,562.35 37,821.48

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
PING_INLINE0.970.78
PING_MBULK1.030.78
SET1.030.79
GET1.180.77
INCR0.850.78
LPUSH1.180.79
RPUSH1.310.79
LPOP1.050.80
RPOP1.080.80
SADD1.040.81
HSET1.050.78
SPOP1.080.78
ZADD1.050.78
ZPOPMIN0.990.77
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)1.841.27
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)4.072.28
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)5.663.35
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)6.313.57
MSET (10 keys)1.250.86

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The Linode Nanode instance outperforms the DigitalOcean Regular instance across a majority of benchmarks, particularly in CPU-bound tasks where it reaches a redis SET requests per second (rps) of 39123.63 compared to DigitalOcean's 30571.69, and a higher MySQL bulk insert transactions per second (tps) at 119357.91 versus DigitalOcean's 71020.85. Linode's superior performance is ideal for applications requiring high CPU efficiency and throughput, even though DigitalOcean offers competitive memory and I/O performance, making it suitable for memory-heavy and I/O-intensive workloads.

From the friendly human:

If you found this VPS Showdown helpful in your search for a hosting provider, please consider supporting my efforts by signing up using my referral links for DigitalOcean and Linode.

You can also support me next time you shop on Amazon.

Related comparisons