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

Welcome to another round of the VPS Showdown. Today I've spun up some brand new instance from DigitalOcean and Linode and ran my world famous suite of benchmarking scripts. 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 – Regular (1 GB)	Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Last Benchmarked	Sat, 06 Dec 2025 23:00:52 GMT	Sat, 06 Dec 2025 15:00:52 GMT
Linux Distro	Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64	Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version	6.8.0-71-generic	6.8.0-71-generic
MySQL Version	8.0.44-0ubuntu0.24.04.2	8.0.44-0ubuntu0.24.04.2
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 7713 64-Core Processor
Clock Speed (MHz)	2,294.61	2,000.00
CPU Cache Size (KB)	4,096.00	512.00
BogoMips	4,589.21	3,999.99
Events per Second	460.64	1,696.55
Minimum Latency (ms)	0.97	0.28
Average Latency (ms)	2.17	0.57
Maximum Latency (ms)	5.86	8.35
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	3.62	2.76

Memory Read

	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)	Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Operations per second	2,759,292.62	3,710,655.78
Mebibytes per second	2,694.62	3,623.69
Minimum Latency (ms)	0	0
Average Latency (ms)	0	0
Maximum Latency (ms)	3.55	6.08
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	0	0

Memory Write

	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)	Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Operations per second	3,811,404.42	5,361,073.52
Mebibytes per second	3,722.07	5,235.42
Minimum Latency (ms)	0	0
Average Latency (ms)	0	0
Maximum Latency (ms)	1.03	0.32
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	0	0

File I/O

	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)	Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Reads per Second	1,889.66	2,090.82
Writes per Second	1,259.77	1,393.91
Fsyncs per Second	4,041.51	4,462.12
Read Mebibytes per Second	29.53	32.67
Written Mebibytes per Second	19.68	21.78
Minimum Latency (ms)	0	0
Average Latency (ms)	0.14	0.13
Maximum Latency (ms)	6.41	3.84
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	0.38	0.31

Mutex

	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)	Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms)	1,820.55	1,691.70
Average Latency (ms)	1,835.23	1,702.25
Maximum Latency (ms)	1,845.93	1,711.53
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	1,836.24	1,708.63

MySQL Read-only

	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)	Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second	6,018.00	7,867.00
Queries per second	60,180.00	78,670.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	1.21	1.17
Average Latency (ms)	1.66	1.27
Maximum Latency (ms)	9.12	8.46
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	2.11	1.44

MySQL Write-only

	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)	Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second	2,695.00	5,861.00
Queries per second	26,950.00	58,610.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	2.05	1.05
Average Latency (ms)	3.7	1.7
Maximum Latency (ms)	39.1	5.54
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	5.09	2.3

MySQL Read/Write

	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)	Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second	1,693.00	3,019.00
Queries per second	16,930.00	30,190.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	3.89	2.5
Average Latency (ms)	5.9	3.31
Maximum Latency (ms)	27.97	8.17
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	7.56	4.1

MySQL INSERT

	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)	Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second	4,397.00	9,073.00
Queries per second	43,970.00	90,730.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	1.47	0.64
Average Latency (ms)	2.27	1.1
Maximum Latency (ms)	10.52	19.67
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	3.13	1.42

MySQL Bulk INSERT

	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)	Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second	865,805.00	1,521,467.00
Queries per second	8,658,050.00	15,214,670.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	0	0
Average Latency (ms)	0.01	0.01
Maximum Latency (ms)	534	331.87
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	0	0

MySQL SELECT

	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)	Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second	160,781.00	162,791.00
Queries per second	1,607,810.00	1,627,910.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	0.04	0.05
Average Latency (ms)	0.06	0.06
Maximum Latency (ms)	2.38	3.24
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	0.1	0.08

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)	Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second	4,346.00	9,655.00
Queries per second	43,460.00	96,550.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	0.69	0.29
Average Latency (ms)	2.3	1.03
Maximum Latency (ms)	9.26	5.08
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	3.43	1.32

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)	Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second	4,243.00	10,008.00
Queries per second	42,430.00	100,080.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	0.57	0.24
Average Latency (ms)	2.35	1
Maximum Latency (ms)	8.6	5.91
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	4.18	1.27

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)	Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second	3,843.00	8,909.00
Queries per second	38,430.00	89,090.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	1.48	0.66
Average Latency (ms)	2.6	1.12
Maximum Latency (ms)	48.5	5.21
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	3.96	1.58

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)	Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second	4,146.00	8,627.00
Queries per second	41,460.00	86,270.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	1.48	0.67
Average Latency (ms)	2.41	1.16
Maximum Latency (ms)	89.28	9.33
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	3.25	1.55

MySQL DELETE

	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)	Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second	28,617.00	80,867.00
Queries per second	286,170.00	808,670.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	0.04	0.05
Average Latency (ms)	0.35	0.12
Maximum Latency (ms)	20.62	5.05
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	2.22	0.37

Redis

	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)	Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second	48,614.49	46,339.20
PING_MBULK per Second	45,146.73	47,036.69
SET per Second	43,706.29	46,620.05
GET per Second	46,490.00	45,495.91
INCR per Second	44,964.03	46,339.20
LPUSH per Second	42,662.11	45,934.77
RPUSH per Second	42,789.90	46,970.41
LPOP per Second	46,554.93	45,871.56
RPOP per Second	43,821.21	46,040.52
SADD per Second	47,528.52	46,339.20
HSET per Second	45,126.35	46,189.38
SPOP per Second	47,778.31	46,970.41
ZADD per Second	41,841.00	45,955.88
ZPOPMIN per Second	49,900.20	47,014.57
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second	19,770.66	31,715.82
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second	9,430.40	17,780.94
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second	5,985.87	12,304.66
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second	5,319.15	10,728.46
MSET (10 keys) per Second	40,387.72	42,716.79

Redis Average Latency (ms)

	DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)	Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
PING_INLINE	0.69	0.74
PING_MBULK	0.73	0.73
SET	0.77	0.74
GET	0.72	0.75
INCR	0.74	0.74
LPUSH	0.79	0.74
RPUSH	0.78	0.73
LPOP	0.72	0.75
RPOP	0.77	0.74
SADD	0.70	0.74
HSET	0.74	0.74
SPOP	0.69	0.73
ZADD	0.81	0.75
ZPOPMIN	0.67	0.73
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)	1.82	1.09
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)	3.82	1.95
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)	5.91	2.73
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)	6.66	3.18
MSET (10 keys)	0.89	0.82

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

After analyzing the benchmark results for both DigitalOcean's Regular (1 GB) and Linode's Nanode (1 GB), it's clear that Linode's instance outperforms DigitalOcean's in most metrics, particularly in Redis operations and CPU throughput, likely due to the more powerful AMD EPYC processor. DigitalOcean's instance shows slightly better file I/O performance and lower latency in MySQL operations. For CPU-intensive tasks and high Redis throughput, Linode's Nanode is the better choice, while for scenarios where file I/O and MySQL performance are more critical, DigitalOcean's Regular instance might be more suitable.

From the friendly human:

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