DigitalOcean Regular (2 GB) vs. Linode Nanode (1 GB)

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New day, new benchmarks. Today I've got brand new instances from DigitalOcean and Linode to run some benchmarks on. Each instance was running Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 and were created in the New York area (or close to it). Let's get into the numbers.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Last Benchmarked Thu, 01 Oct 2026 05:03:47 GMT Thu, 01 Oct 2026 05:01:32 GMT
Linux Distro Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version 7.0.0-31-generic 7.0.0-34-generic
MySQL Version 8.4.11-0ubuntu0.26.04.1 8.4.11-0ubuntu0.26.04.1
Redis Version 8.0.5 8.0.5
Location New York, NY Newark, NJ
Monthly Price $12.00 $5.00
RAM (GB) 2 1
CPU Cores 1 1
Storage (TB) 50 25
Storage Type SSD SSD
Transfer (TB) 2 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)DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Value (CPU events per $/mo)Linode – Nanode (1 GB)

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) takes 5 of 6 categories.

CPU

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 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 4,000.00
Events per Second 370.52 1,548.52
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.05 0.3
Average Latency (ms) 2.69 0.64
Maximum Latency (ms) 14.47 21.85
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.57 3.13

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Operations per second 1,545,738.03 4,152,415.63
Mebibytes per second 1,509.51 4,055.09
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 40.5 3.82
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Operations per second 2,729,753.92 5,085,089.33
Mebibytes per second 2,665.78 4,965.91
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 149.26 3.02
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Reads per Second 475.95 2,243.85
Writes per Second 317.30 1,495.90
Fsyncs per Second 1,017.81 4,795.18
Read Mebibytes per Second 7.44 35.06
Written Mebibytes per Second 4.96 23.37
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.55 0.12
Maximum Latency (ms) 115.24 10.58
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.08 0.29

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 2,875.76 2,091.27
Average Latency (ms) 2,899.88 2,118.60
Maximum Latency (ms) 2,919.44 2,135.24
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2,932.60 2,120.76

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 4,374.00 5,863.00
Queries per second 43,740.00 58,630.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.26 1.27
Average Latency (ms) 2.28 1.7
Maximum Latency (ms) 40.05 8.4
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.81 2.14

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 273.00 5,483.00
Queries per second 2,730.00 54,830.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 4.19 1.12
Average Latency (ms) 36.89 1.82
Maximum Latency (ms) 358.42 17.77
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 130.13 2.3

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 258.00 2,888.00
Queries per second 2,580.00 28,880.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 6.26 2.56
Average Latency (ms) 38.75 3.46
Maximum Latency (ms) 259.21 14.47
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 123.28 4.25

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 796.00 9,681.00
Queries per second 7,960.00 96,810.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.03 0.67
Average Latency (ms) 12.55 1.03
Maximum Latency (ms) 223.21 10.33
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 63.32 1.39

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 374,315.00 1,142,842.00
Queries per second 3,743,150.00 11,428,420.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.03 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 3489.66 503.09
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 124,757.00 129,495.00
Queries per second 1,247,570.00 1,294,950.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.06
Average Latency (ms) 0.08 0.08
Maximum Latency (ms) 168.4 6.67
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.12 0.11

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 2,721.00 6,337.00
Queries per second 27,210.00 63,370.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.36 0.41
Average Latency (ms) 3.67 1.58
Maximum Latency (ms) 34.76 8.87
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5 2.26

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 2,783.00 7,456.00
Queries per second 27,830.00 74,560.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.51 0.49
Average Latency (ms) 3.59 1.34
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.87 8.59
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5.28 2.11

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 454.00 6,797.00
Queries per second 4,540.00 67,970.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.46 0.65
Average Latency (ms) 22.01 1.47
Maximum Latency (ms) 345.88 65.69
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 102.97 3.3

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 263.00 9,777.00
Queries per second 2,630.00 97,770.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.54 0.67
Average Latency (ms) 38 1.02
Maximum Latency (ms) 442.22 8.79
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 110.66 1.34

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 1,343.00 48,437.00
Queries per second 13,430.00 484,370.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.06 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 7.46 0.21
Maximum Latency (ms) 266.15 39.37
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 34.33 0.92

Redis

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 35,701.54 32,669.06
PING_MBULK per Second 40,338.84 33,738.19
SET per Second 37,119.52 15,948.96
GET per Second 38,343.56 31,675.64
INCR per Second 36,710.72 34,387.89
LPUSH per Second 35,637.92 34,650.04
RPUSH per Second 34,891.84 31,705.77
LPOP per Second 33,400.13 32,478.08
RPOP per Second 32,615.79 30,883.26
SADD per Second 25,246.15 33,046.93
HSET per Second 28,645.09 31,357.79
SPOP per Second 30,138.64 30,395.14
ZADD per Second 31,735.96 32,894.74
ZPOPMIN per Second 34,770.52 33,456.00
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 17,424.64 25,271.67
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 7,678.13 12,495.31
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 5,190.49 10,815.49
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 4,344.61 9,273.00
MSET (10 keys) per Second 27,434.84 30,066.15

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
PING_INLINE0.870.94
PING_MBULK0.750.90
SET0.842.12
GET0.811.00
INCR0.850.90
LPUSH0.880.90
RPUSH0.900.97
LPOP0.940.96
RPOP0.961.01
SADD1.230.93
HSET1.090.99
SPOP1.031.01
ZADD0.980.95
ZPOPMIN0.890.92
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)1.841.29
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)3.922.48
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)5.582.83
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)6.573.28
MSET (10 keys)1.391.09

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The Linode Nanode (1 GB) instance decisively outperforms the DigitalOcean Regular (2 GB) in key benchmarks, especially in Redis SET operations with a rate of 83,682 requests per second compared to 47,939 for DigitalOcean. This advantage extends to MySQL bulk insert operations, where Linode achieves 132,295 transactions per second versus DigitalOcean's 94,643. For those needing high throughput and low latency for database-intensive tasks, Linode's superior performance makes it the better choice.

From the friendly human:

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