Choose a compute plan
Akamai offers several Linode types, each optimized for different workload patterns, and each available in a range of resource sizes. This allows you to create a Linode that matches the specific performance profile your application needs, whether that means abundant storage, high memory capacity, sustained CPU performance, or specialized acceleration from GPUs or VPUs.
This guide walks you through each plan family, outlining key characteristics, resource ranges, and recommended use cases to help you select the most appropriate plan for your workload.
Switching plans
You can change your plan at any time. See Resizing a Linode for more information.
Linode types
The following Linode types—which correspond directly to our compute plan families—are available in all core compute regions. Dedicated CPU is the only Linode type available in distributed compute regions.
Each Linode type has unique characteristics, with resources optimized for specific workload patterns. Most Linode types are equipped with dedicated cores, delivering peak performance and competition-free resources. Shared CPU Linodes use shared cores, making them suited to workloads that don't require sustained compute availability. To learn more about the difference between shared and dedicated cores, see Choosing between shared and dedicated CPUs.
Shared CPU Linodes
1 GB - 192 GB Memory, 1 - 32 Shared vCPU Cores, 25 GB - 3840 GB Storage
Starting at $5/mo ($0.0075/hour). See Shared CPU pricing for a full list of plans, resources, and pricing.
Shared CPU Linodes offer a balanced array of resources coupled with shared CPU cores. These CPU cores can be used at 100% for short bursts, but should remain below 80% sustained usage on average, including virtualization overheads. To account for overheads, CPU usage should be monitored through Cloud Manager or the Linode API. This keeps costs down while still supporting a wide variety of cloud applications. Your processes are scheduled on the same CPU cores as processes from other Linodes. This shared scheduling is done in a secure and performant manner. While Akamai Technologies, Inc.works to minimize competition for CPU resources between your Linode and other Linodes on the same hardware, it's possible that high usage from neighboring Linodes can negatively impact the performance of your Linode.
Recommended Use Cases:
Best for development servers, staging servers, low traffic websites, personal blogs, and production applications that may not be affected by resource contention.
- Medium to low traffic websites, such as for marketing content and blogs
- Forums
- Development and staging servers
- Low traffic databases
- Worker nodes within a container orchestration cluster
Dedicated CPU Linodes
4 GB - 512 GB Memory, 2 - 256 Dedicated vCPUs, 40 GB - 7200 GB Storage
Starting at $36/mo ($0.05/hour). Pricing may vary by region, and differs for distributed compute regions. See Dedicated CPU pricing for a full list of plans, resources, and pricing.
Dedicated CPU Linodes reserve full physical CPU cores for your workloads, delivering 100% of each core’s performance at all times. This eliminates resource contention and ensures consistent, predictable compute capacity. With dedicated CPU Linodes, you can run sustained, high-load applications with confidence that performance will not fluctuate due to shared CPU usage.
Dedicated CPU plans offer consistently high performance that scales from general purpose production workloads to the most demanding CPU-intensive applications. Each generation maps directly to a specific AMD processor architecture and configuration, providing clear insight into the underlying hardware powering your applications.
Dedicated CPU plans include:
- G8 Dedicated for resource-Intensive workloads. G8 Dedicated plans deliver high-consistency compute powered by Zen 5 cores with new 1:4 VM shapes and larger memory options. These plans are best for enterprise-grade, latency-sensitive, and resource-heavy applications.
- G7 Dedicated for performance workloads. G7 Dedicated plans deliver consistent, enterprise-grade performance on Zen3 cores. These plans are designed for CPU-intensive, business-critical applications requiring reliability and scale.
- G6 Dedicated for production workloads. G6 Dedicated plans offer CPUs with no resource contention. These plans deliver balanced performance suitable for most production cloud applications.
Recommended Use Cases:
Best for production websites, high traffic databases, and any application that requires 100% sustained CPU usage or may be impacted by resource contention.
G6, G7, or G8 Dedicated:
- CI/CD pipelines and build servers
- Replicated or distributed file systems (GlusterFS, DRBD)
G7 or G8 Dedicated:
- Big data and data analysis
- High traffic databases (Galera, PostgreSQL with Replication Manager, MongoDB using Replication Sets)
- Scientific computing
G8 Dedicated::
- Game servers (like Minecraft or Team Fortress)
- Audio and video transcoding
- Machine learning and AI
For audio and video transcoding, you may also want to consider GPU or Accelerated (VPU) plans. For machine learning and AI workloads, you may also want to consider GPU plans.
High Memory Linodes
24 GB - 300 GB Memory, 2 - 16 Dedicated vCPUs, 20 GB - 340 GB Storage
Starting at $60/mo ($0.09/hour). See High Memory pricing for a full list of plans, resources, and pricing.
High Memory Linodes are optimized for memory-intensive applications and equipped with dedicated CPUs, which provide competition free guaranteed CPU resources. These Linodes feature higher RAM allocations and relatively fewer vCPUs and less storage. This keeps your costs down and provides power to memory-intensive applications.
Recommended Use Cases:
Best for in-memory databases, in-memory caching systems, big data processing, and any production application that requires a large amount of memory while keeping costs down.
- Any production application that requires large amounts of memory
- In-memory database caching systems, such as Redis and Memcached. These applications offer very fast retrieval of data, but they store data in a non-persistent manner (with some caveats). So, they are usually used in conjunction with another persistent database server running on a separate Linode.
- In-memory databases, such as possible with NoSQL and other solutions
- Big data processing (and data analysis)
GPU Linodes
16 GB - 196 GB Memory, 4 - 48 Dedicated vCPUs, 640 GB - 2.56 TB GB Storage
NVIDIA RTX 4000 Ada GPU plans starting at $350/mo ($0.52/hour) with 1 GPU card, 4 vCPU cores, 16 GB of memory, and 500 GB of SSD storage. NVIDIA Quadro RTX 6000 plans starting at $1000/mo ($1.50/hr) with 1 GPU card, 8 vCPU cores, 32 GB of memory, and 640 GB of storage. For a full list of plans, resources, and pricing, see GPU pricing.
GPU Linodes are the only Linodes equipped with NVIDIA RTX 4000 Ada GPU cards or NVIDIA Quadro RTX 6000 GPU cards for on demand execution of complex processing workloads. These GPUs have CUDA cores, Tensor cores, and RT (Ray Tracing) cores. GPUs are designed to process large blocks of data in parallel, meaning that they are an excellent choice for any workload requiring thousands of simultaneous threads. With significantly more logical cores than a standard CPU, GPUs can perform computations that process large amounts of data in parallel more efficiently.
Recommended Use Cases:
Best for applications that require massive amounts of parallel processing power, including machine learning, AI inferencing, graphics processing, and big data analysis.
- Video encoding
- Graphics processing
- AI inferencing
- Big data analysis
- General Purpose computing using NVIDIA's CUDA Toolkit
Accelerated Linodes
16 GB – 24 GB Memory, 8 – 12 Dedicated vCPUs, 200 — 300 GB Storage
Starting at $280/mo ($0.42/hour). See Accelerated pricing for a full list of plans, resources, and pricing.
Accelerated Linodes are optimized for transcoding. Backed by NETINT Quadra T1U video processing units (VPUs), Accelerated Linodes can offer significant performance and cost advantages over transcoding setups that rely on CPUs or GPUs.
Recommended Use Cases:
Best for video processing, including streaming content directly to viewers over the internet.
Compute resources
When selecting a plan, it is important to understand the hardware resources allocated to your Linode. These resources include the amount of vCPU cores, memory, storage space, network transfer, and more. Start by reviewing each resource below and the implications it may have for your application.
| Resource | Description |
|---|---|
| Memory (RAM) | The working memory available for your server's processes. Your server stores information in memory that is needed to carry out its functions. Or, it caches data in memory for fast retrieval in the future, if it is likely that the data will be needed. Data stored in RAM is accessed faster than data stored in your disks, but it is not persistent storage. |
| vCPU Cores | The number of virtual CPUs (vCPUs) available to your server. Your software is often designed to execute its tasks across multiple CPUs in parallel. The higher your vCPU count, the more work you can perform simultaneously. Plans are also equipped with either shared CPU cores or dedicated CPU cores. Dedicated CPU cores allow your system to utilize 100% of your CPU resources at all times, while shared CPU cores require a lower sustained usage and may be affected by resource contention. See Choose between shared and dedicated CPUs. |
| Storage | Your server's built-in persistent storage. Large databases, media libraries, and other stores of files will require more storage space. Your Linode's storage is maintained on high-performance SSDs for fast access. You can also supplement your disks with extra Block Storage volumes. |
| Transfer | The total amount of traffic your server can emit over the course of a month. Inbound traffic sent to your Linode does not count against your transfer quota. If you exceed your quota, your service will not be shut off; instead, an overage will be billed. See Network transfer usage and costs for more information about how transfer works. |
| Network In | The maximum bandwidth for inbound traffic sent to your Linode. The bandwidth you observe will also depend on other factors, like the geographical distance between you and your Linode and the bandwidth of your local ISP. For help with choosing a data center that will feature the lowest latency and best bandwidth, review the Choose a data center guide. |
| Network Out | The maximum bandwidth for outbound traffic emitted by your Linode. The bandwidth you observe will also depend on other factors, like the geographical distance between you and your Linode and the bandwidth of your local ISP. For help with choosing a data center that will feature the lowest latency and best bandwidth, review the Choose a data center guide. |
| GPU | GPU's, or Graphical Processing Units are specialized hardware units only available on our GPU Linodes. Originally designed to manipulate computer graphics and handle image processing, GPUs are now commonly also used for many compute intensive tasks that require thousands of simultaneous threads and the higher number of logical cores that a CPU can not provide alone. |
Pricing
If you run a business or not, you likely need to think about pricing when considering which plan is right for you. You can view all pricing on our pricing page. Note that pricing and plan options may vary between regions.
Compare cost per month and save with predictable and transparent pricing using our Cloud Estimator. Explore bundled compute, storage, and transfer packages against AWS, GCP, and Azure.
Migrating from on-premise or between cloud providers for hosting, cloud storage, or cloud computing? Use our total cost of ownership Cloud Computing Calculator to receive a full cost breakdown and technical recommendations.
Updated 6 days ago