DEV Community

Alex Spinov
Alex Spinov

Posted on

Valkey Has a Free Redis Alternative — In-Memory Database Without License Restrictions

#devops #database #opensource #performance

When Redis changed its license to SSPL in 2024, companies using Redis in their products faced a choice: pay, stop using it, or find an alternative.

The Redis License Problem

Redis moved from BSD to dual-license (RSALv2/SSPL). If you offer Redis as a service or embed it in commercial products, you might need a commercial license.

Valkey is a community-driven fork of Redis 7.2, maintained by the Linux Foundation. Same API, same performance, truly open-source (BSD license).

What Valkey Offers for Free

  • Redis Compatible - Drop-in replacement, same commands, same protocol
  • In-Memory Speed - Sub-millisecond latency for reads and writes
  • Data Structures - Strings, lists, sets, sorted sets, hashes, streams, HyperLogLog
  • Persistence - RDB snapshots and AOF (append-only file)
  • Clustering - Native cluster mode for horizontal scaling
  • Pub/Sub - Real-time messaging between services
  • Lua Scripting - Server-side scripting for atomic operations
  • BSD License - No license restrictions, use anywhere

Quick Start 

docker run -d --name valkey -p 6379:6379 valkey/valkey
# Use any Redis client - it just works
redis-cli -h localhost ping
# PONG
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

GitHub: valkey-io/valkey - 18K+ stars

Need to monitor and scrape data from multiple web services automatically? I build custom scraping solutions. Check out my web scraping toolkit or email me at spinov001@gmail.com for a tailored solution.

Top comments (0)