Linode Nanode (1 GB) vs. UpCloud Balanced (1 GB)

Same showdown, different day. Today I've spun up brand new instance from Linode and UpCloud to run some benchmarks on. All instances were spun up with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and were created in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Enough talk. Here's the data.

Overview

	Linode – Nanode (1 GB)	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Last Benchmarked	Sat, 12 Jul 2025 09:00:28 GMT	Sat, 12 Jul 2025 09:00:46 GMT
Linux Distro	Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64	Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version	6.8.0-53-generic	6.8.0-63-generic
MySQL Version	8.0.42-0ubuntu0.24.04.2	8.0.42-0ubuntu0.24.04.2
Redis Version	7.0.15	7.0.15
Location	Newark, NJ	New York, NY
Monthly Price	$5.00	€7.00
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)	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Vendor	AuthenticAMD	AuthenticAMD
Model Name	AMD EPYC 7713 64-Core Processor	AMD EPYC 7542 32-Core Processor
Clock Speed (MHz)	2,000.00	2,894.56
CPU Cache Size (KB)	512.00	512.00
BogoMips	3,999.99	5,789.12
Events per Second	2,012.93	1,598.32
Minimum Latency (ms)	0.28	0.6
Average Latency (ms)	0.5	0.63
Maximum Latency (ms)	9.33	1.77
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	1.82	0.65

Memory Read

	Linode – Nanode (1 GB)	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Operations per second	5,417,461.53	5,296,342.95
Mebibytes per second	5,290.49	5,172.21
Minimum Latency (ms)	0	0
Average Latency (ms)	0	0
Maximum Latency (ms)	2.57	0.66
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	0	0

Memory Write

	Linode – Nanode (1 GB)	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Operations per second	5,385,604.41	5,303,572.63
Mebibytes per second	5,259.38	5,179.27
Minimum Latency (ms)	0	0
Average Latency (ms)	0	0
Maximum Latency (ms)	6.44	1.11
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	0	0

File I/O

	Linode – Nanode (1 GB)	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Reads per Second	2,528.27	2,673.39
Writes per Second	1,685.45	1,782.23
Fsyncs per Second	5,394.71	5,706.63
Read Mebibytes per Second	39.50	41.77
Written Mebibytes per Second	26.34	27.85
Minimum Latency (ms)	0	0
Average Latency (ms)	0.1	0.1
Maximum Latency (ms)	7.27	29.03
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	0.24	0.3

Mutex

	Linode – Nanode (1 GB)	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms)	1,751.52	1,591.88
Average Latency (ms)	1,772.85	1,598.83
Maximum Latency (ms)	1,793.42	1,605.31
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	1,803.47	1,618.78

MySQL Read-only

	Linode – Nanode (1 GB)	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second	6,523.00	7,419.00
Queries per second	65,230.00	74,190.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	1.28	1.26
Average Latency (ms)	1.53	1.35
Maximum Latency (ms)	12.18	9.25
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	1.82	1.47

MySQL Write-only

	Linode – Nanode (1 GB)	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second	4,733.00	4,494.00
Queries per second	47,330.00	44,940.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	1.2	1.44
Average Latency (ms)	2.11	2.22
Maximum Latency (ms)	10.77	140.18
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	3.07	3.02

MySQL Read/Write

	Linode – Nanode (1 GB)	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second	2,432.00	2,493.00
Queries per second	24,320.00	24,930.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	2.98	2.77
Average Latency (ms)	4.11	4.01
Maximum Latency (ms)	14.87	43.94
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	5.37	5.37

MySQL INSERT

	Linode – Nanode (1 GB)	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second	8,444.00	6,791.00
Queries per second	84,440.00	67,910.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	0.7	1.09
Average Latency (ms)	1.18	1.47
Maximum Latency (ms)	8.19	38.69
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	1.55	1.89

MySQL Bulk INSERT

	Linode – Nanode (1 GB)	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second	1,201,092.00	1,171,967.00
Queries per second	12,010,920.00	11,719,670.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	0	0
Average Latency (ms)	0.01	0.01
Maximum Latency (ms)	479.91	456.94
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	0	0

MySQL SELECT

	Linode – Nanode (1 GB)	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second	134,921.00	177,998.00
Queries per second	1,349,210.00	1,779,980.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	0.05	0.05
Average Latency (ms)	0.07	0.06
Maximum Latency (ms)	7.73	3.8
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	0.1	0.07

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

	Linode – Nanode (1 GB)	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second	8,634.00	7,899.00
Queries per second	86,340.00	78,990.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	0.39	0.45
Average Latency (ms)	1.16	1.27
Maximum Latency (ms)	7.28	26.56
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	1.52	1.61

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

	Linode – Nanode (1 GB)	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second	9,365.00	7,696.00
Queries per second	93,650.00	76,960.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	0.4	0.48
Average Latency (ms)	1.07	1.3
Maximum Latency (ms)	7.81	3.7
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	1.42	1.67

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

	Linode – Nanode (1 GB)	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second	7,509.00	6,305.00
Queries per second	75,090.00	63,050.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	0.71	0.89
Average Latency (ms)	1.33	1.59
Maximum Latency (ms)	9.37	94.06
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	1.89	2.3

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

	Linode – Nanode (1 GB)	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second	7,643.00	6,627.00
Queries per second	76,430.00	66,270.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	0.85	0.96
Average Latency (ms)	1.31	1.51
Maximum Latency (ms)	9.33	90.52
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	1.73	2.03

MySQL DELETE

	Linode – Nanode (1 GB)	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
Transactions per second	58,128.00	61,421.00
Queries per second	581,280.00	614,210.00
Minimum Latency (ms)	0.05	0.05
Average Latency (ms)	0.17	0.16
Maximum Latency (ms)	11.05	59.51
95th Percentile Latency (ms)	1.08	1.25

Redis

	Linode – Nanode (1 GB)	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second	34,952.81	45,085.66
PING_MBULK per Second	36,324.01	45,641.26
SET per Second	34,916.20	44,843.05
GET per Second	35,385.70	45,413.26
INCR per Second	35,727.05	45,433.89
LPUSH per Second	35,174.11	45,433.89
RPUSH per Second	35,435.86	45,248.87
LPOP per Second	35,335.69	43,859.65
RPOP per Second	36,114.12	44,722.72
SADD per Second	36,231.88	45,703.84
HSET per Second	34,566.20	45,045.04
SPOP per Second	35,273.37	46,104.20
ZADD per Second	36,049.03	45,085.66
ZPOPMIN per Second	34,578.15	45,934.77
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second	25,647.60	29,222.68
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second	15,082.96	15,559.36
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second	10,877.84	10,643.96
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second	9,583.13	9,204.71
MSET (10 keys) per Second	32,331.07	40,338.84

Redis Average Latency (ms)

	Linode – Nanode (1 GB)	UpCloud – Balanced (1 GB)
PING_INLINE	0.94	0.76
PING_MBULK	0.91	0.75
SET	0.95	0.77
GET	0.93	0.76
INCR	0.93	0.76
LPUSH	0.94	0.76
RPUSH	0.94	0.76
LPOP	0.94	0.79
RPOP	0.92	0.77
SADD	0.91	0.76
HSET	0.96	0.77
SPOP	0.93	0.75
ZADD	0.92	0.77
ZPOPMIN	0.95	0.75
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)	1.31	1.22
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)	2.20	2.36
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)	3.04	3.46
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)	3.50	4.00
MSET (10 keys)	1.03	0.87

Conclusion

After analyzing the benchmark results for both Linode's Nanode (1 GB) and UpCloud's Balanced (1 GB) instances, it's clear that UpCloud's instance outperforms Linode's in most metrics, especially in Redis operations where it achieves higher requests per second and lower latencies across various commands. The UpCloud instance also shows better CPU performance with higher events per second and lower latency. However, Linode's instance excels in file I/O operations, with higher throughput and lower read and write latencies. In terms of ideal use cases, UpCloud would be better suited for CPU-intensive and I/O-bound workloads that benefit from higher throughput and lower latency, while Linode's instance might be more appropriate for scenarios where file I/O performance is a critical factor.

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