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

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New day, new benchmarks. Today I've spun up brand new instance from DigitalOcean and Linode to run some benchmarks on. Each instance was spun up with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and all resided in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Without further ado, here's the results.

Overview

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Last Benchmarked Mon, 06 Apr 2026 20:00:52 GMT Tue, 07 Apr 2026 15:00:53 GMT
Linux Distro Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version 6.8.0-71-generic 6.8.0-71-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 Newark, NJ New York, NY
Monthly Price $5.00 $6.00
RAM (GB) 1 1
CPU Cores 1 1
Storage (TB) 25 25
Storage Type SSD SSD
Transfer (TB) 1 1

CPU

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Vendor AuthenticAMD GenuineIntel
Model Name AMD EPYC 7713 64-Core Processor DO-Regular
Clock Speed (MHz) 2,000.00 2,294.61
CPU Cache Size (KB) 512.00 4,096.00
BogoMips 3,999.99 4,589.21
Events per Second 1,620.95 413.49
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.28 0.98
Average Latency (ms) 0.61 2.41
Maximum Latency (ms) 16.58 6.72
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.97 3.96

Memory

Memory Read

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Operations per second 2,785,205.91 2,931,810.57
Mebibytes per second 2,719.93 2,863.10
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.98 3.41
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Operations per second 5,247,741.79 3,364,154.34
Mebibytes per second 5,124.75 3,285.31
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.41 1.03
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Reads per Second 2,319.13 1,031.43
Writes per Second 1,546.08 687.62
Fsyncs per Second 4,957.36 2,211.89
Read Mebibytes per Second 36.24 16.12
Written Mebibytes per Second 24.16 10.74
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.11 0.25
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.17 124.42
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.25 0.64

Mutex

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 2,349.38 2,085.64
Average Latency (ms) 2,390.79 2,117.30
Maximum Latency (ms) 2,412.13 2,126.74
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2,405.65 2,120.76

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second 6,608.00 4,188.00
Queries per second 66,080.00 41,880.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.28 1.34
Average Latency (ms) 1.51 2.38
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.96 13.68
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.79 2.76

MySQL Write-only

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second 4,539.00 898.00
Queries per second 45,390.00 8,980.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.33 3.87
Average Latency (ms) 2.2 11.12
Maximum Latency (ms) 18.39 199.35
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.25 22.28

MySQL Read/Write

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second 2,306.00 977.00
Queries per second 23,060.00 9,770.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 3.11 6.44
Average Latency (ms) 4.33 10.23
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.82 46.69
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5.67 15.27

MySQL INSERT

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second 7,556.00 2,413.00
Queries per second 75,560.00 24,130.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.83 2.28
Average Latency (ms) 1.32 4.14
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.91 161.12
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.82 6.79

MySQL Bulk INSERT

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second 1,171,967.00 767,507.00
Queries per second 11,719,670.00 7,675,070.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 511.73 701.42
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second 127,249.00 129,998.00
Queries per second 1,272,490.00 1,299,980.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.05 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.08 0.08
Maximum Latency (ms) 7.66 2.05
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.11 0.11

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second 8,151.00 2,875.00
Queries per second 81,510.00 28,750.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.39 1.27
Average Latency (ms) 1.22 3.47
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.53 24.28
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.7 4.74

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second 9,239.00 2,894.00
Queries per second 92,390.00 28,940.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.33 1.12
Average Latency (ms) 1.08 3.45
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.4 12.05
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.42 4.91

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second 7,280.00 1,665.00
Queries per second 72,800.00 16,650.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.71 2.62
Average Latency (ms) 1.37 6
Maximum Latency (ms) 23.45 45.51
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.03 11.65

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second 7,428.00 1,754.00
Queries per second 74,280.00 17,540.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.72 2.21
Average Latency (ms) 1.34 5.7
Maximum Latency (ms) 6.56 163.84
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.86 11.04

MySQL DELETE

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second 54,792.00 15,267.00
Queries per second 547,920.00 152,670.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.05 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.18 0.65
Maximum Latency (ms) 11.29 31.8
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.14 3.62

Redis

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 28,910.09 29,577.05
PING_MBULK per Second 34,328.87 36,496.35
SET per Second 33,178.50 32,164.68
GET per Second 33,670.04 36,589.83
INCR per Second 34,650.04 36,390.10
LPUSH per Second 32,992.41 35,001.75
RPUSH per Second 32,992.41 32,552.08
LPOP per Second 33,068.79 34,470.87
RPOP per Second 33,388.98 31,575.62
SADD per Second 33,014.20 28,546.96
HSET per Second 33,967.39 29,673.59
SPOP per Second 35,549.23 31,705.77
ZADD per Second 34,071.55 31,585.60
ZPOPMIN per Second 34,364.26 33,255.74
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 20,876.83 13,048.02
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 13,976.24 6,657.35
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 10,399.33 4,256.59
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 8,848.77 3,682.29
MSET (10 keys) per Second 31,240.24 19,047.62

Redis Average Latency (ms)

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
PING_INLINE1.111.10
PING_MBULK0.970.90
SET0.991.03
GET0.970.91
INCR0.950.91
LPUSH0.990.95
RPUSH0.991.01
LPOP1.000.98
RPOP0.981.06
SADD0.981.13
HSET0.961.09
SPOP0.931.03
ZADD0.961.04
ZPOPMIN0.940.98
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)1.612.76
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)2.395.26
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)3.268.10
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)3.839.21
MSET (10 keys)1.082.01

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

After analyzing the benchmarks for both DigitalOcean's Regular (1 GB) instance and Linode's Nanode (1 GB) instance, it is evident that Linode's Nanode outperforms DigitalOcean's Regular in most metrics, particularly in CPU and memory throughput where Nanode demonstrates significantly higher requests per second and lower latencies across Redis commands and MySQL operations. The Linode instance shows superior file I/O performance with lower average latencies and higher throughput rates, which reflects in the lower latencies for Redis LRANGE commands despite lower read and write operations per second compared to DigitalOcean. For developers and sysadmins seeking a balance of cost and performance, DigitalOcean's Regular might suffice for simple tasks, but for more demanding CPU-intensive or I/O-heavy workloads, Linode's Nanode provides a clear advantage due to its higher benchmark scores and better overall performance.

From the friendly human:

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