Compute - Shared CPU
Balanced and affordable virtual machines equipped with shared CPU resources. Ideal for general workloads.
Shared CPU Compute Instances are our most affordable virtual machines that offer a significant price-to-performance ratio. They provide a well balanced set of resources that are ideal for a wide range of applications. While most of our other Compute Instance types are equipped with dedicated CPUs, Shared Instances are not. This means that CPU resources are shared with other Compute Instances and a small amount of resource contention is possible.
Shared plans are ideal for development servers, staging servers, low traffic websites, personal blogs, and production applications that may not be affected by resource contention.
Recommended Workloads
Shared CPU Compute Instances are suitable for general workloads that value cost over maximum performance:
- Production applications with low to medium CPU requirements and are not affected by resource contention
- Applications that require a balanced set of resources
- 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
Availability
Shared CPU instances are available across all regions.
Plans and Pricing
| Resource | Available Plans |
|---|---|
| vCPU cores | 1-32 cores |
| Memory | 1 GB - 192 GB |
| Storage | 25 GB - 3840 GB |
| Outbound Network Transfer | 1 TB - 20 TB |
| Outbound Network Bandwidth | 1 Gbps - 12 Gbps |
Pricing starts at $5 for a Shared CPU Compute Instance with 1 vCPU core, 1 GB of memory, and 25 GB of SSD storage. Review the Pricing page for additional plans and their associated costs. See the Comparison of Compute Instances section below to learn more about other Instance types.
Additional Technical Specifications
In addition to the resources allocated to each available plan (outlined above), Shared CPU Compute Instances have the following specifications:
- Shared vCPU cores
- 100% SSD (Solid State Disk) storage
- 40 Gbps inbound network bandwidth
- Free inbound network transfer
- Dedicated IPv4 and IPv6 addresses (additional addresses available on request)
- Deploy using the many available Linux Distributions, Marketplace Apps, or Community StackScripts
- Direct console access through Lish
- Provisioning and management through the Cloud Manager, Linode CLI, or programmatically through the Linode API
- Multi-queue NIC support on plans with 2 or more vCPU cores.
Services Included at No Extra Cost
Linode bundles the following services with all Compute Instances:
- Always-on DDoS Protection
- Domain management through our DNS Manager
- Seamless firewall management with Cloud Firewalls
- Private Layer 2 networks with VLANs
- Metrics and monitoring through the Cloud Manager and Longview (free plan)
- Reusable deployment scripts through StackScripts
Complementary Paid Services
To help build and manage your applications, consider complementing your Compute Instance with the following compatible services:
- Automated daily and weekly backups with our Backups service
- Add additional storage drives with Block Storage
- Create and store reusable images with Custom Images
- Advanced metrics and monitoring through Longview Pro
- Automated service deployments with LKE (Linode Kubernetes Engine)
- Incident response (and more) with Managed Services
- Enable load balancing and horizontal scaling with NodeBalancers
- Add scalable storage to your application with Object Storage
Comparison of Compute Instances
| Instance Type | CPU | Overview |
|---|---|---|
| Shared CPU Instance | Shared | 1 GB - 192 GB Memory, 1 - 32 vCPUs, 25 GB - 2840 GB Storage Starting at $5/mo ($0.0075/hour) Offers a balanced array of resources coupled with shared CPUs, which keeps costs down while still supporting a wide variety of cloud applications. Best for development servers, staging servers, low traffic web applications, and almost any modern web application. |
| Dedicated CPU Instance | Dedicated | 4 GB - 512 GB Memory, 2 - 64 vCPUs, 80 GB - 7200 GB Storage Starting at $30/mo ($0.045/hour) Equipped with Dedicated CPUs, which provide competition free guaranteed CPU resources. Perfectly balanced for most production applications. Best for production websites, enterprise applications, high traffic databases, and any application that requires 100% sustained CPU usage. |
| High Memory Instance | Dedicated | 24 GB - 300 GB Memory, 2 - 16 vCPUs, 20 GB - 340 GB Storage Starting at $60/mo ($0.09/hour) Optimized for memory-intensive applications and equipped with Dedicated CPUs, which provide competition free guaranteed CPU resources. 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. |
| GPU Instance | Dedicated | 32 GB - 128 GB Memory, 8 - 24 vCPUs, 640 GB - 2560 GB Storage Starting at $1000/mo ($1.50/hour) The only instance type that’s equipped with Nvidia Quadro RTX 6000 GPUs (up to 4) for on demand execution of complex processing workloads. Best for applications that require massive amounts of parallel processing power, including machine learning, AI, graphics processing, and big data analysis. |
See Choosing a Compute Instance Type and Plan for a full comparison.
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