Valkey is a free, BSD-licensed, Linux Foundation-backed fork of Redis for caching, messaging, and data storage. See features, history, and alternatives.
Valkey is a free and open-source, high-performance, in-memory key-value data store that can be used for caching, message queuing, session storage, and as a general-purpose primary database. It was designed as a compatible, drop-in alternative to Redis, supporting the same core commands, data structures, and client libraries that developers already use.
The project was launched in March 2024 in direct response to Redis Inc.'s decision to move Redis away from its original BSD 3-Clause open-source license toward a dual RSALv2/SSPLv1 source-available license. A group of engineers from AWS, Google, Oracle, Ericsson, Alibaba, Tencent, and Huawei forked the last BSD-licensed release of Redis, version 7.2.4, and placed the new project under the neutral governance of the Linux Foundation.
Unlike a vendor-controlled project, Valkey is steered by a technical steering committee drawn from multiple competing companies, which the Linux Foundation says guarantees the codebase will remain open source permanently. This governance model has made Valkey the default choice for several major cloud providers migrating their managed Redis-compatible services.
Valkey retains full compatibility with the Redis data model, supporting strings, hashes, lists, sets, sorted sets, streams, bitmaps, and hyperloglogs, so most existing Redis clients, drivers, and tooling work against Valkey with no code changes.
It supports standalone, replicated, and clustered deployment modes, giving teams options for both simple caching layers and horizontally scaled, highly available deployments across many nodes.
Valkey includes built-in Lua scripting for atomic server-side operations, a module system for extending the server with custom commands and data types, and ongoing performance work such as multi-threaded I/O aimed at improving throughput over the pre-fork Redis baseline.
Valkey itself is completely free. As a BSD 3-Clause licensed open-source project, it can be downloaded, self-hosted, modified, and redistributed, including in commercial products, without license fees or usage restrictions.
Most organizations pay only for the infrastructure running Valkey, or for a managed version offered by a cloud vendor, such as AWS ElastiCache for Valkey, Google Cloud Memorystore for Valkey, Aiven for Valkey, or Percona's distribution, each of which prices Valkey as a managed database service on top of the free open-source core.
Valkey is a free, open-source, in-memory key-value data store forked from Redis in March 2024, used for caching, message queuing, and as a primary database, and governed by the Linux Foundation.
Valkey was created after Redis Inc. changed Redis's license from the permissive BSD 3-Clause license to the source-available RSALv2 and SSPLv1 dual license, which is not recognized as open source. A group of engineers forked the last BSD-licensed version, Redis 7.2.4, to keep a truly open-source option available.
Yes. Valkey is licensed under BSD 3-Clause, so it can be downloaded, self-hosted, modified, and used commercially at no cost.
Yes. Valkey supports the same data structures, commands, and most client libraries as Redis 7.2, so existing Redis applications generally work with Valkey without code changes.
Valkey is governed by the Linux Foundation through a technical steering committee made up of engineers from multiple companies, including AWS, Google, Oracle, Ericsson, Alibaba, Tencent, and Huawei.
AWS, Google Cloud, Oracle Cloud, Aiven, Percona, and DigitalOcean, among others, offer managed Valkey services or actively contribute to the project.
Redis later added AGPLv3 as an open-source licensing option with Redis 8, but Valkey remains under the more permissive BSD 3-Clause license and continues to be developed independently under Linux Foundation governance rather than by Redis Inc.