DigitalOcean Regular (8 GB, 4 Cores) vs. Linode Nanode (1 GB)

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New day, new benchmarks. Today I've spun up brand new instance from DigitalOcean and Linode and did some benchmarking. All instances were running Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and all resided in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Time to see who showed up today.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Regular (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Last Benchmarked Wed, 27 May 2026 04:00:52 GMT Fri, 29 May 2026 15:00:53 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 $48.00 $5.00
RAM (GB) 8 1
CPU Cores 4 1
Storage (TB) 160 25
Storage Type SSD SSD
Transfer (TB) 5 1

CPU

DigitalOcean – Regular (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Vendor GenuineIntel AuthenticAMD
Model Name DO-Regular AMD EPYC 7642 48-Core Processor
Clock Speed (MHz) 2,494.14 2,300.00
CPU Cache Size (KB) 4,096.00 512.00
BogoMips 4,988.27 4,599.99
Events per Second 956.36 1,022.23
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.91 0.61
Average Latency (ms) 1.04 0.98
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.47 5.4
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.23 2.39

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Regular (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Operations per second 4,415,190.25 5,296,233.64
Mebibytes per second 4,311.71 5,172.10
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.13 3.05
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Operations per second 4,364,099.63 5,154,651.90
Mebibytes per second 4,261.82 5,033.84
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.1 3.06
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Regular (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Reads per Second 5,118.53 2,055.76
Writes per Second 3,412.35 1,370.51
Fsyncs per Second 10,921.52 4,389.22
Read Mebibytes per Second 79.98 32.12
Written Mebibytes per Second 53.32 21.41
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.05 0.13
Maximum Latency (ms) 24.89 12.79
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.2 0.35

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Regular (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 388.91 1,633.32
Average Latency (ms) 492.55 1,644.62
Maximum Latency (ms) 543.67 1,653.29
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 539.71 1,648.20

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 5,472.00 7,575.00
Queries per second 54,720.00 75,750.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.23 1.22
Average Latency (ms) 1.82 1.32
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.46 4.67
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.35 1.42

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 4,458.00 5,800.00
Queries per second 44,580.00 58,000.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.03 1.15
Average Latency (ms) 2.24 1.72
Maximum Latency (ms) 9.15 12.35
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.19 2.39

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 2,244.00 2,955.00
Queries per second 22,440.00 29,550.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.84 2.64
Average Latency (ms) 4.45 3.38
Maximum Latency (ms) 25.6 22.69
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5.67 4.41

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 5,974.00 8,921.00
Queries per second 59,740.00 89,210.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.72 0.65
Average Latency (ms) 1.67 1.12
Maximum Latency (ms) 15.64 8.92
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.61 1.42

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 1,346,717.00 1,288,467.00
Queries per second 13,467,170.00 12,884,670.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 400.11 398.24
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Regular (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 132,510.00 170,179.00
Queries per second 1,325,100.00 1,701,790.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.07 0.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.3 7.27
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.11 0.08

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Regular (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 5,509.00 7,819.00
Queries per second 55,090.00 78,190.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.65 0.42
Average Latency (ms) 1.81 1.28
Maximum Latency (ms) 6.18 6.03
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.61 1.64

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Regular (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 4,947.00 7,328.00
Queries per second 49,470.00 73,280.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.62 0.3
Average Latency (ms) 2.02 1.36
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.42 4.97
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.97 1.76

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 6,409.00 8,603.00
Queries per second 64,090.00 86,030.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.75 0.69
Average Latency (ms) 1.56 1.16
Maximum Latency (ms) 12.82 6.97
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.39 1.7

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 7,214.00 7,719.00
Queries per second 72,140.00 77,190.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.68 0.65
Average Latency (ms) 1.38 1.29
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.08 54.76
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2 1.73

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Regular (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Transactions per second 66,354.00 80,451.00
Queries per second 663,540.00 804,510.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.15 0.12
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.89 16.14
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.01 0.42

Redis

DigitalOcean – Regular (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 51,867.22 44,052.86
PING_MBULK per Second 53,022.27 44,563.28
SET per Second 57,770.08 44,072.28
GET per Second 58,513.75 44,345.89
INCR per Second 53,619.30 42,535.09
LPUSH per Second 49,950.05 41,545.49
RPUSH per Second 60,679.61 37,299.52
LPOP per Second 62,073.25 43,327.55
RPOP per Second 59,417.71 43,103.45
SADD per Second 66,666.66 43,994.72
HSET per Second 60,532.69 43,956.04
SPOP per Second 55,803.57 44,130.62
ZADD per Second 58,823.53 42,390.84
ZPOPMIN per Second 61,199.51 43,159.26
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 38,895.37 28,843.38
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 17,892.29 15,153.81
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 11,713.72 10,595.47
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 10,884.95 9,122.42
MSET (10 keys) per Second 58,927.52 40,112.31

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Regular (8 GB, 4 Cores) Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
PING_INLINE0.510.78
PING_MBULK0.500.77
SET0.480.78
GET0.450.77
INCR0.490.80
LPUSH0.560.82
RPUSH0.430.90
LPOP0.440.80
RPOP0.470.80
SADD0.450.78
HSET0.450.79
SPOP0.470.77
ZADD0.450.81
ZPOPMIN0.510.79
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.821.23
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.732.38
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)2.623.44
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)2.813.96
MSET (10 keys)0.510.88

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

In benchmarking, DigitalOcean's Regular instance (8 GB RAM, 4 vCPUs) demonstrates superior performance in terms of RAM, CPU processing power, and throughput, particularly excelling in complex memory operations, CPU-intensive tasks, and high concurrency scenarios such as Redis benchmarks and MySQL OLTP operations, which show significantly lower latencies and higher request rates per second across various operations. In contrast, Linode's Nanode instance (1 GB RAM, 1 vCPU) performs well in low-resource scenarios and shows competitive Redis performance, but lags in CPU-intensive tasks and complex memory operations due to its single vCPU and limited RAM. Therefore, the DigitalOcean instance is better suited for CPU-intensive, I/O-heavy workloads, and resource-demanding applications, while the Linode Nanode is ideal for minimal workloads and cost-effective, low-resource operations.

From the friendly human:

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