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Alex Spinov
Alex Spinov

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Upstash Has a Free API — Serverless Redis and Kafka with HTTP

#redis #serverless #webdev #tutorial

Upstash provides serverless Redis and Kafka accessible via HTTP — perfect for edge functions, serverless, and environments where TCP connections aren't available.

Why Upstash?

  • HTTP-based — works in Cloudflare Workers, Vercel Edge, Deno Deploy
  • Pay per request — no idle charges, scale to zero
  • Free tier — 10K commands/day, 256MB storage
  • Global replication — read from the nearest region

Quick Start 

npm install @upstash/redis
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import { Redis } from '@upstash/redis';

const redis = new Redis({
  url: 'https://YOUR_REDIS.upstash.io',
  token: 'YOUR_TOKEN',
});

// Basic operations
await redis.set('key', 'value');
const value = await redis.get('key');

// JSON
await redis.set('user:1', { name: 'Alice', age: 30 });
const user = await redis.get<{ name: string; age: number }>('user:1');

// Expire
await redis.set('session', 'data', { ex: 3600 }); // 1 hour
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Rate Limiting 

npm install @upstash/ratelimit
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import { Ratelimit } from '@upstash/ratelimit';

const ratelimit = new Ratelimit({
  redis,
  limiter: Ratelimit.slidingWindow(10, '10s'), // 10 requests per 10 seconds
});

// In your API route
export async function POST(request: Request) {
  const ip = request.headers.get('x-forwarded-for') ?? '127.0.0.1';
  const { success, limit, remaining } = await ratelimit.limit(ip);

  if (!success) {
    return new Response('Too Many Requests', {
      status: 429,
      headers: {
        'X-RateLimit-Limit': limit.toString(),
        'X-RateLimit-Remaining': remaining.toString(),
      },
    });
  }

  // Process request...
}
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QStash (Message Queue) 

npm install @upstash/qstash
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import { Client } from '@upstash/qstash';

const qstash = new Client({ token: 'YOUR_QSTASH_TOKEN' });

// Publish message
await qstash.publishJSON({
  url: 'https://yourapp.com/api/process',
  body: { orderId: '123', action: 'fulfill' },
  retries: 3,
});

// Scheduled message
await qstash.publishJSON({
  url: 'https://yourapp.com/api/reminder',
  body: { userId: '456' },
  delay: 3600, // 1 hour
});

// Cron job
await qstash.publishJSON({
  url: 'https://yourapp.com/api/daily-report',
  body: {},
  cron: '0 9 * * *', // Daily at 9 AM
});
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Vector (AI Similarity Search) 

npm install @upstash/vector
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import { Index } from '@upstash/vector';

const index = new Index({
  url: 'YOUR_VECTOR_URL',
  token: 'YOUR_VECTOR_TOKEN',
});

// Upsert vectors
await index.upsert([
  { id: 'doc1', vector: [0.1, 0.2, 0.3], metadata: { title: 'Hello' } },
  { id: 'doc2', vector: [0.4, 0.5, 0.6], metadata: { title: 'World' } },
]);

// Query similar
const results = await index.query({
  vector: [0.1, 0.2, 0.3],
  topK: 5,
  includeMetadata: true,
});
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REST API (No SDK Needed) 

# Set
curl https://YOUR_REDIS.upstash.io/set/mykey/myvalue \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN'

# Get
curl https://YOUR_REDIS.upstash.io/get/mykey \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN'

# Pipeline
curl https://YOUR_REDIS.upstash.io/pipeline \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN' \
  -d '[["SET","key1","val1"],["GET","key1"]]'
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Need caching for your scraping pipeline? Check out my Apify actors for web scraping with built-in caching. Email spinov001@gmail.com for custom solutions.

Upstash, Redis Cloud, or Dragonfly — which Redis provider do you use? Share below!

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