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

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My friend, I'm so glad you're here! Today I spun up fresh instances from DigitalOcean and Linode to run some benchmarks on. All instances were spun up with Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 and were created in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Let's get into the numbers.

Overview

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Last Benchmarked Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:29:06 GMT Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:28:23 GMT
Linux Distro Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version 7.0.0-22-generic 7.0.0-27-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 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

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)Linode – Nanode (1 GB)
Value (CPU events per $/mo)Linode – Nanode (1 GB)

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

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 2,294.60
CPU Cache Size (KB) 512.00 4,096.00
BogoMips 4,000.00 4,589.20
Events per Second 2,995.79 843.27
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.3 1.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.33 1.18
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.68 2.34
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.34 1.47

Memory

Memory Read

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Operations per second 5,138,712.44 3,368,867.41
Mebibytes per second 5,018.27 3,289.91
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.36 5.83
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Operations per second 5,126,038.83 3,248,162.62
Mebibytes per second 5,005.90 3,172.03
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.06 4.26
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Reads per Second 3,144.54 545.13
Writes per Second 2,096.29 363.42
Fsyncs per Second 6,714.53 1,169.66
Read Mebibytes per Second 49.13 8.52
Written Mebibytes per Second 32.75 5.68
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.08 0.48
Maximum Latency (ms) 40.23 78.76
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.19 1.79

Mutex

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 1,726.97 2,099.34
Average Latency (ms) 1,752.52 2,145.49
Maximum Latency (ms) 1,763.59 2,160.95
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1,771.29 2,159.29

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second 7,323.00 5,001.00
Queries per second 73,230.00 50,010.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.26 1.21
Average Latency (ms) 1.36 2
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.63 17.66
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.58 2.66

MySQL Write-only

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second 4,970.00 738.00
Queries per second 49,700.00 7,380.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.15 4.83
Average Latency (ms) 2.02 13.55
Maximum Latency (ms) 99.24 58.05
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.19 25.28

MySQL Read/Write

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second 3,294.00 613.00
Queries per second 32,940.00 6,130.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.51 7.34
Average Latency (ms) 3.03 16.32
Maximum Latency (ms) 24.98 67.72
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.68 30.81

MySQL INSERT

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second 11,632.00 1,035.00
Queries per second 116,320.00 10,350.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.65 3.79
Average Latency (ms) 0.86 9.65
Maximum Latency (ms) 6.61 48.93
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.14 16.71

MySQL Bulk INSERT

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second 1,201,092.00 734,741.00
Queries per second 12,010,920.00 7,347,410.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 468.92 888.59
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second 140,938.00 128,886.00
Queries per second 1,409,380.00 1,288,860.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.05 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.07 0.08
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.49 4.52
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.12 0.12

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second 6,603.00 2,691.00
Queries per second 66,030.00 26,910.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.52 1.22
Average Latency (ms) 1.51 3.71
Maximum Latency (ms) 9.28 15.34
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.96 5.28

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second 7,697.00 3,433.00
Queries per second 76,970.00 34,330.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.49 0.79
Average Latency (ms) 1.3 2.91
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.02 7.06
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.7 5

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second 11,465.00 1,000.00
Queries per second 114,650.00 10,000.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.66 3.62
Average Latency (ms) 0.87 9.99
Maximum Latency (ms) 43.16 38.48
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.1 18.28

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second 11,672.00 835.00
Queries per second 116,720.00 8,350.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.67 3.33
Average Latency (ms) 0.86 11.98
Maximum Latency (ms) 24.29 340.24
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.1 24.38

MySQL DELETE

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
Transactions per second 94,623.00 3,488.00
Queries per second 946,230.00 34,880.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.05 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.11 2.87
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.28 57.43
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.19 14.73

Redis

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 38,446.75 32,051.28
PING_MBULK per Second 38,505.97 29,629.63
SET per Second 39,123.63 30,571.69
GET per Second 38,804.81 26,511.13
INCR per Second 39,169.61 36,469.73
LPUSH per Second 39,215.69 26,709.40
RPUSH per Second 39,184.95 23,741.69
LPOP per Second 39,323.63 29,700.03
RPOP per Second 39,093.04 28,985.51
SADD per Second 38,008.36 29,700.03
HSET per Second 40,160.64 29,770.77
SPOP per Second 38,714.67 28,473.80
ZADD per Second 40,064.10 29,806.26
ZPOPMIN per Second 39,169.61 31,104.20
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 25,163.56 17,519.27
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 13,114.75 7,340.53
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 8,311.86 5,113.52
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 7,606.30 4,561.42
MSET (10 keys) per Second 37,821.48 30,562.35

Redis Average Latency (ms)

Linode – Nanode (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Regular (1 GB)
PING_INLINE0.780.97
PING_MBULK0.781.03
SET0.791.03
GET0.771.18
INCR0.780.85
LPUSH0.791.18
RPUSH0.791.31
LPOP0.801.05
RPOP0.801.08
SADD0.811.04
HSET0.781.05
SPOP0.781.08
ZADD0.781.05
ZPOPMIN0.770.99
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)1.271.84
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)2.284.07
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)3.355.66
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)3.576.31
MSET (10 keys)0.861.25

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The Linode Nanode instance outperforms the DigitalOcean Regular instance across a majority of benchmarks, particularly in CPU-bound tasks where it reaches a redis SET requests per second (rps) of 39123.63 compared to DigitalOcean's 30571.69, and a higher MySQL bulk insert transactions per second (tps) at 119357.91 versus DigitalOcean's 71020.85. Linode's superior performance is ideal for applications requiring high CPU efficiency and throughput, even though DigitalOcean offers competitive memory and I/O performance, making it suitable for memory-heavy and I/O-intensive workloads.

From the friendly human:

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