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The short answer is it requires a lot more RAM, disk, and bandwidth. A lot of that depends on how heavily the node is used too though.

I'm not an expert on the performance side of things though, so if you are interested in the heavy details I'd refer you to the series of posts done by @gtg :)

In terms of my node, it has 256 GB RAM, 2x450GB SSD NVMe disks, and 500 Mbps unlimited bandwidth. It's not going to be enough to handle api.steemit.com levels of traffic, but it will still support basic use by a lot of apps.

Can you share at least the posts of @gtg ;)