🗝️

Valkey

Valkey is a free, open-source in-memory key-value store maintained by the Linux Foundation — a community fork created after Redis changed its license terms. It ranks #24 (tied) in real-world usage at roughly 2.4% adoption, and it behaves almost identically to Redis, appealing to developers who want the same speed and commands under a guaranteed fully open-source license.

📝 Quick facts
Type: In-memory key-value store / cache
Made by: Linux Foundation (community fork of Redis)
License: Free, open-source (BSD)
Hosting: Self-hosted or cloud-managed
Primary use case: Caching, session storage, and fast key-value lookups

Jump to: Example commands Getting started Best for

Example commands

Valkey speaks the same command protocol as Redis, so the basics — and most client libraries — carry over unchanged.

SET session:1234 "user_42" EX 3600  # store a value, expire after 1 hour
GET session:1234                    # retrieve it
INCR pageviews:home               # atomically increment a counter

Getting started

Valkey ships as a single server binary or Docker image, and any existing Redis client library will connect to it without changes.

# run locally with Docker
docker run -p 6379:6379 -d valkey/valkey

# connect with the standard redis-cli (protocol-compatible)
redis-cli -h 127.0.0.1 -p 6379

🎯 Best for — teams that already rely on Redis-style caching and want to keep that exact workflow while standing firmly on a fully open-source, community-governed project.