Linode Linode (2 GB) vs. Vultr Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)

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My friend, I'm so glad you're here! Today I've spun up some brand new instance from Linode and Vultr 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. Without further ado, here's the results.

Overview

Linode – (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Last Benchmarked Sat, 23 May 2026 09:00:52 GMT Sat, 23 May 2026 11:00:52 GMT
Linux Distro Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version 6.8.0-111-generic 6.8.0-117-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 Newark, NJ
Monthly Price $12.00 $40.00
RAM (GB) 2 8
CPU Cores 1 4
Storage (TB) 50 160
Storage Type SSD SSD
Transfer (TB) 2 4

CPU

Linode – (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Vendor AuthenticAMD GenuineIntel
Model Name AMD EPYC 7642 48-Core Processor Intel Xeon Processor (Skylake, IBRS)
Clock Speed (MHz) 2,300.00 2,593.90
CPU Cache Size (KB) 512.00 16,384.00
BogoMips 4,600.00 5,187.80
Events per Second 773.82 1,100.82
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.6 0.88
Average Latency (ms) 1.29 0.91
Maximum Latency (ms) 17.76 1.56
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.39 0.97

Memory

Memory Read

Linode – (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Operations per second 2,700,813.94 3,685,781.23
Mebibytes per second 2,637.51 3,599.40
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 7.03 1.03
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

Linode – (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Operations per second 5,302,948.53 3,590,629.63
Mebibytes per second 5,178.66 3,506.47
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.52 1.16
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

Linode – (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Reads per Second 2,025.98 4,999.39
Writes per Second 1,350.65 3,332.93
Fsyncs per Second 4,323.48 10,670.47
Read Mebibytes per Second 31.66 78.12
Written Mebibytes per Second 21.10 52.08
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.13 0.05
Maximum Latency (ms) 45.86 37.52
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.39 0.18

Mutex

Linode – (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Minimum Latency (ms) 1,556.02 369.37
Average Latency (ms) 1,568.38 416.22
Maximum Latency (ms) 1,576.64 441.77
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1,589.90 442.73

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

Linode – (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 6,951.00 5,144.00
Queries per second 69,510.00 51,440.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.36 1.72
Average Latency (ms) 1.44 1.94
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.29 7.67
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.52 2.35

MySQL Write-only

Linode – (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 5,715.00 5,108.00
Queries per second 57,150.00 51,080.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.25 1.15
Average Latency (ms) 1.75 1.96
Maximum Latency (ms) 7.28 12.52
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.39 2.71

MySQL Read/Write

Linode – (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 2,709.00 2,247.00
Queries per second 27,090.00 22,470.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.93 3.08
Average Latency (ms) 3.69 4.45
Maximum Latency (ms) 25.87 29.7
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.91 5.28

MySQL INSERT

Linode – (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 9,934.00 7,630.00
Queries per second 99,340.00 76,300.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.64 0.71
Average Latency (ms) 1.01 1.31
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.75 29.81
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.21 1.55

MySQL Bulk INSERT

Linode – (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 1,230,217.00 898,571.00
Queries per second 12,302,170.00 8,985,710.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 439.33 505.86
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

Linode – (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 151,747.00 149,465.00
Queries per second 1,517,470.00 1,494,650.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.05 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.07 0.07
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.52 1.22
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.08 0.09

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

Linode – (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 7,511.00 4,249.00
Queries per second 75,110.00 42,490.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.48 0.83
Average Latency (ms) 1.33 2.35
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.69 6.6
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.7 3.02

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

Linode – (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 7,250.00 2,637.00
Queries per second 72,500.00 26,370.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.54 0.94
Average Latency (ms) 1.38 3.79
Maximum Latency (ms) 6.41 6.3
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.79 5.09

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

Linode – (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 9,038.00 7,166.00
Queries per second 90,380.00 71,660.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.65 0.7
Average Latency (ms) 1.11 1.39
Maximum Latency (ms) 15.16 28.84
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.58 1.79

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

Linode – (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 9,031.00 7,661.00
Queries per second 90,310.00 76,610.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.65 0.7
Average Latency (ms) 1.11 1.3
Maximum Latency (ms) 15.38 33.97
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.52 1.58

MySQL DELETE

Linode – (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 73,981.00 69,690.00
Queries per second 739,810.00 696,900.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.05 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.13 0.14
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.11 27.73
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.77 0.87

Redis

Linode – (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
PING_INLINE per Second 41,118.42 54,436.58
PING_MBULK per Second 41,999.16 48,828.12
SET per Second 40,916.53 51,572.98
GET per Second 41,220.11 48,239.27
INCR per Second 41,237.11 52,328.62
LPUSH per Second 41,169.21 45,454.54
RPUSH per Second 41,237.11 49,751.24
LPOP per Second 40,064.10 53,390.28
RPOP per Second 40,518.64 53,648.07
SADD per Second 41,390.73 48,285.85
HSET per Second 40,833.00 51,493.30
SPOP per Second 38,535.64 52,910.05
ZADD per Second 40,600.89 53,504.55
ZPOPMIN per Second 41,528.24 53,590.57
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 27,412.28 28,645.09
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 14,954.39 13,131.98
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 10,579.77 8,529.51
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 9,398.50 7,479.99
MSET (10 keys) per Second 37,495.31 49,212.60

Redis Average Latency (ms)

Linode – (2 GB) Vultr – Cloud Compute (8 GB, 4 Cores)
PING_INLINE0.820.47
PING_MBULK0.810.53
SET0.830.50
GET0.820.54
INCR0.820.49
LPUSH0.830.58
RPUSH0.830.52
LPOP0.850.49
RPOP0.840.48
SADD0.820.54
HSET0.840.53
SPOP0.870.49
ZADD0.840.48
ZPOPMIN0.820.48
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)1.270.91
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)2.421.94
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)3.443.00
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)3.893.43
MSET (10 keys)0.940.77

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

After comparing the benchmarks from both the Linode and Vultr instances, it's clear that the Vultr instance with 4 cores and 8 GB of RAM outperforms the Linode instance with 1 core and 2 GB of RAM across various metrics, especially in CPU-bound and memory-bound operations, showing higher RPS and lower latency for Redis commands, as well as better throughput and lower latency for file I/O and memory operations. While the Linode instance provides slightly lower latency for MySQL operations, Vultr's superior multi-core processing capacity makes it more suitable for CPU-intensive, I/O-heavy workloads, whereas Linode's configuration may be more cost-effective for lighter tasks or smaller applications with less demanding resource requirements.

From the friendly human:

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