VPS Showdown VPS Showdown

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

vs.

Fresh benchmarks coming at ya. Today I spun up fresh instances from DigitalOcean and Linode and ran some benchmarks. All instances were spun up with Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 and all resided in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Time to see who showed up today.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
Last Benchmarked Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:31:21 GMT Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:32:06 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 $12.00 $12.00
RAM (GB) 2 2
CPU Cores 1 1
Storage (TB) 50 50
Storage Type SSD SSD
Transfer (TB) 2 2

Head-to-head

Category winners from the latest benchmarks.

CategoryWinner
CPU (events/sec)Linode – (2 GB)
Memory (read MiB/s)DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Disk I/O (MiB/s)DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
MySQL (read/write tps)DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Redis (GET/sec)DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB)
Value (CPU events per $/mo)Linode – (2 GB)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) takes 4 of 6 categories.

CPU

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
Vendor GenuineIntel AuthenticAMD
Model Name DO-Regular AMD EPYC 7713 64-Core Processor
Clock Speed (MHz) 2,494.14 2,000.00
CPU Cache Size (KB) 4,096.00 512.00
BogoMips 4,988.28 3,999.99
Events per Second 411.59 1,405.31
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.99 0.3
Average Latency (ms) 2.42 0.71
Maximum Latency (ms) 19.9 29.07
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.96 3.43

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
Operations per second 4,123,717.02 1,801,279.78
Mebibytes per second 4,027.07 1,759.06
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.54 33.18
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
Operations per second 4,007,053.05 2,032,533.72
Mebibytes per second 3,913.14 1,984.90
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.82 8.09
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
Reads per Second 2,758.95 1,746.86
Writes per Second 1,839.23 1,164.57
Fsyncs per Second 5,895.77 3,731.74
Read Mebibytes per Second 43.11 27.29
Written Mebibytes per Second 28.74 18.20
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.09 0.15
Maximum Latency (ms) 11.81 8.78
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.3 0.35

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 2,498.24 2,445.00
Average Latency (ms) 2,546.75 2,468.58
Maximum Latency (ms) 2,562.19 2,493.44
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2,585.31 2,493.86

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
Transactions per second 5,626.00 4,764.00
Queries per second 56,260.00 47,640.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.18 1.44
Average Latency (ms) 1.77 2.1
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.44 6.79
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.39 2.57

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
Transactions per second 4,813.00 4,157.00
Queries per second 48,130.00 41,570.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.92 1.43
Average Latency (ms) 2.07 2.4
Maximum Latency (ms) 29.26 15.8
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.19 3.19

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
Transactions per second 1,931.00 1,872.00
Queries per second 19,310.00 18,720.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.94 3.41
Average Latency (ms) 5.17 5.34
Maximum Latency (ms) 17.66 22.82
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 7.17 7.04

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
Transactions per second 6,585.00 6,268.00
Queries per second 65,850.00 62,680.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.56 0.94
Average Latency (ms) 1.51 1.59
Maximum Latency (ms) 11.88 5.65
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.71 2.14

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
Transactions per second 833,039.00 636,443.00
Queries per second 8,330,390.00 6,364,430.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.02
Maximum Latency (ms) 568.39 796.96
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
Transactions per second 148,439.00 97,280.00
Queries per second 1,484,390.00 972,800.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.06
Average Latency (ms) 0.07 0.1
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.95 2.79
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.1 0.14

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
Transactions per second 3,505.00 4,406.00
Queries per second 35,050.00 44,060.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.98 0.67
Average Latency (ms) 2.85 2.27
Maximum Latency (ms) 6.79 10.03
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.25 3.3

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
Transactions per second 5,769.00 5,651.00
Queries per second 57,690.00 56,510.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.53 0.57
Average Latency (ms) 1.73 1.77
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.73 4.22
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.66 2.52

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
Transactions per second 6,299.00 3,320.00
Queries per second 62,990.00 33,200.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.57 0.89
Average Latency (ms) 1.58 3.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 28.52 35.11
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.07 9.39

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
Transactions per second 7,198.00 7,391.00
Queries per second 71,980.00 73,910.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.51 0.84
Average Latency (ms) 1.39 1.35
Maximum Latency (ms) 167.69 5.35
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.35 1.89

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
Transactions per second 33,426.00 39,858.00
Queries per second 334,260.00 398,580.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.06
Average Latency (ms) 0.3 0.25
Maximum Latency (ms) 22.19 7.4
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.61 1.47

Redis

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 34,188.04 18,789.93
PING_MBULK per Second 44,483.99 23,607.18
SET per Second 40,112.31 22,988.51
GET per Second 40,883.07 25,387.15
INCR per Second 39,729.84 24,073.18
LPUSH per Second 40,404.04 24,313.15
RPUSH per Second 37,397.16 24,912.80
LPOP per Second 37,257.82 25,859.84
RPOP per Second 36,114.12 24,654.83
SADD per Second 37,425.15 27,027.03
HSET per Second 38,759.69 25,419.42
SPOP per Second 45,641.26 26,082.42
ZADD per Second 42,283.30 24,931.44
ZPOPMIN per Second 47,438.33 23,963.58
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 23,089.36 18,135.65
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 12,169.89 8,966.20
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 8,394.19 5,910.17
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 6,932.89 5,628.10
MSET (10 keys) per Second 31,796.50 23,877.74

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) Linode – (2 GB)
PING_INLINE0.941.63
PING_MBULK0.691.27
SET0.771.34
GET0.751.20
INCR0.781.27
LPUSH0.781.27
RPUSH0.841.24
LPOP0.851.20
RPOP0.871.25
SADD0.831.13
HSET0.811.21
SPOP0.681.16
ZADD0.741.24
ZPOPMIN0.651.26
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)1.401.67
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)2.633.16
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)3.624.67
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)4.244.85
MSET (10 keys)1.061.37

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The DigitalOcean instance excels in Redis benchmarks, particularly in commands like LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) with a significantly higher RPS (8394 vs. 5910) and lower average latency (3.623ms vs. 4.666ms). It also performs better in MySQL bulk insert tests with higher TPS (82488 vs. 61293). For CPU-intensive or database-heavy workloads, the DigitalOcean instance is the preferred choice due to its superior performance in these critical benchmarks.

From the friendly human:

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Related comparisons

vs. DigitalOcean Regular (1 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Regular (1 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Premium Intel (1 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Premium Intel (2 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Premium Intel (1 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Premium AMD (1 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Premium Intel (2 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Premium AMD (2 GB)