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

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Fresh benchmarks coming at ya. Today I've spun up some brand new instance from DigitalOcean and Linode to run some benchmarks on. All instances were running Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and were created in the New York area (or close to it). Let's get into the numbers.

Overview

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Last Benchmarked Wed, 29 Oct 2025 11:00:52 GMT Thu, 30 Oct 2025 13:00:52 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 8.0.43-0ubuntu0.24.04.2 8.0.43-0ubuntu0.24.04.2
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 7601 32-Core Processor DO-Regular
Clock Speed (MHz) 2,200.00 2,294.61
CPU Cache Size (KB) 512.00 4,096.00
BogoMips 4,399.99 4,589.21
Events per Second 626.39 434.72
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.67 0.97
Average Latency (ms) 1.6 2.29
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.53 5.84
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.25 3.82

Memory

Memory Read

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Operations per second 1,992,468.11 2,271,077.10
Mebibytes per second 1,945.77 2,217.85
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.79 3.16
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Operations per second 2,048,078.98 3,571,915.45
Mebibytes per second 2,000.08 3,488.20
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 7.36 1.03
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Reads per Second 1,569.23 1,689.67
Writes per Second 1,046.16 1,126.45
Fsyncs per Second 3,352.99 3,608.72
Read Mebibytes per Second 24.52 26.40
Written Mebibytes per Second 16.35 17.60
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.17 0.15
Maximum Latency (ms) 6.62 4.63
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.4 0.44

Mutex

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 2,118.43 2,188.92
Average Latency (ms) 2,136.64 2,208.20
Maximum Latency (ms) 2,147.24 2,224.28
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2,159.29 2,238.47

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second 4,513.00 4,947.00
Queries per second 45,130.00 49,470.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.69 1.23
Average Latency (ms) 2.21 2.02
Maximum Latency (ms) 14.39 8.78
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.48 2.66

MySQL Write-only

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second 3,583.00 2,404.00
Queries per second 35,830.00 24,040.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.87 2.38
Average Latency (ms) 2.79 4.15
Maximum Latency (ms) 27.89 30.52
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.03 5.67

MySQL Read/Write

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second 1,726.00 1,197.00
Queries per second 17,260.00 11,970.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 4.55 4.72
Average Latency (ms) 5.8 8.35
Maximum Latency (ms) 20.42 22.84
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 7.04 11.45

MySQL INSERT

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second 6,224.00 3,197.00
Queries per second 62,240.00 31,970.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.13 1.76
Average Latency (ms) 1.6 3.12
Maximum Latency (ms) 9.35 13.76
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.03 4.41

MySQL Bulk INSERT

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second 734,741.00 833,039.00
Queries per second 7,347,410.00 8,330,390.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 693.48 685.52
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second 96,019.00 147,814.00
Queries per second 960,190.00 1,478,140.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.07 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.1 0.07
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.17 1.74
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.14 0.11

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second 5,082.00 4,051.00
Queries per second 50,820.00 40,510.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.71 0.57
Average Latency (ms) 1.97 2.46
Maximum Latency (ms) 13.24 11.75
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.61 3.62

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second 5,444.00 3,658.00
Queries per second 54,440.00 36,580.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.49 0.69
Average Latency (ms) 1.84 2.73
Maximum Latency (ms) 7.22 6.66
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.57 4.74

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second 5,363.00 3,277.00
Queries per second 53,630.00 32,770.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.08 1.7
Average Latency (ms) 1.86 3.05
Maximum Latency (ms) 7.65 32.29
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.86 4.41

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second 6,025.00 3,525.00
Queries per second 60,250.00 35,250.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.23 1.62
Average Latency (ms) 1.66 2.83
Maximum Latency (ms) 7.39 12.51
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.22 4.1

MySQL DELETE

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second 32,847.00 17,063.00
Queries per second 328,470.00 170,630.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.07 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.3 0.58
Maximum Latency (ms) 13.38 22.64
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.64 3.3

Redis

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 31,162.36 25,503.70
PING_MBULK per Second 32,414.91 31,585.60
SET per Second 32,488.63 32,216.49
GET per Second 31,979.53 40,144.52
INCR per Second 32,082.13 42,863.27
LPUSH per Second 31,847.13 38,226.30
RPUSH per Second 32,195.75 42,480.88
LPOP per Second 31,959.09 43,478.26
RPOP per Second 31,426.78 44,365.57
SADD per Second 32,030.75 40,584.41
HSET per Second 31,585.60 42,517.01
SPOP per Second 32,123.36 43,591.98
ZADD per Second 31,347.96 37,327.36
ZPOPMIN per Second 32,061.56 41,459.37
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 19,459.04 20,020.02
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 10,030.09 9,682.42
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 6,825.94 5,348.74
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 5,909.47 5,316.60
MSET (10 keys) per Second 29,931.16 30,684.26

Redis Average Latency (ms)

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
PING_INLINE1.051.28
PING_MBULK1.001.02
SET1.021.03
GET1.020.83
INCR1.020.77
LPUSH1.030.88
RPUSH1.020.78
LPOP1.040.78
RPOP1.050.76
SADD1.020.82
HSET1.040.78
SPOP1.010.76
ZADD1.050.90
ZPOPMIN1.010.80
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)1.701.77
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)3.223.72
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)4.676.50
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)5.256.60
MSET (10 keys)1.161.15

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

After analyzing the benchmark results for both DigitalOcean's Regular (1 GB) and Linode's Nanode (1 GB) instances, it's clear that DigitalOcean's instance excels in Redis operations, particularly in high-throughput scenarios like LPUSH and LRANGE, with lower latency and higher requests per second compared to Linode's Nanode. Linode's instance, however, shows better performance in CPU-intensive tasks, as evidenced by higher events per second and lower average latency in CPU benchmarks. Both instances offer comparable file I/O and memory performance, but Linode's Nanode has a slight edge in memory operations. For developers needing high Redis performance and lower latency for data-intensive applications, DigitalOcean's instance is recommended, whereas for workloads that require more CPU power and less emphasis on Redis, Linode's Nanode would be more suitable.

From the friendly human:

If you found this VPS Showdown helpful in your search for a hosting provider, please consider supporting my efforts by signing up using my referral links for DigitalOcean and Linode.

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