Not long ago, picking an in-memory key-value store was easy. Redis was the default. Fast, simple, everywhere.
Then the rules changed. Redis moved to a much more restrictive license. Suddenly, many companies had to rethink their plans, especially if they cared about staying open source or needed flexibility for the cloud.
That’s when Valkey arrived. It’s a fork of Redis, created by the open source community and backed by heavy hitters like AWS and Google Cloud. The difference? Valkey is truly open source and run by the Linux Foundation. No hidden strings, no gotchas.
So, where does that leave you? Do you stick with Redis? Jump to Valkey? The answer isn’t a simple “one is better.” It depends entirely on your project’s needs, performance requirements, and considerations for software licensing and support.
The fundamental divide in key-value stores: Licensing and philosophy
Before we get into features, let’s call out the one thing that sets Valkey and Redis on different paths: licensing.
- Valkey is licensed under BSD, which means it’s genuinely open source. You can use it wherever you want, tweak it, and even sell your own version if you want.
- Open source Redis now has a dual RSALv2/SSPLv1 license. “Source available” means you can see the code, but you can’t use it to run your own cloud service or build your own commercial product without jumping through hoops. Redis Inc. calls the shots.
- Redis Enterprise is a commercial product with a proprietary license, more features, and a direct support contract with Redis Inc.
This distinction between community-driven open source and vendor-controlled source-available is the central issue driving the decision for many developers.
What this means in practice: What you can (and cannot) do
Think of it like this:
With Valkey, you can run it anywhere, for any purpose. You can customize it, embed it in commercial products you sell, or even build your own cloud database service with it. You are in complete control. What you don’t get are the proprietary, pre-packaged modules or a single-vendor support contract that Redis Enterprise offers.
With open source Redis, you can use it freely for most internal applications. However, you cannot easily offer it as a commercial cloud service or embed it in certain types of commercial software without navigating the restrictive license terms. You are also limited to its single-threaded performance.
With Redis Enterprise, you can immediately access advanced features like native Vector Search or JSON support and get a direct enterprise support contract. You cannot, however, treat it like open source. You are operating within the rules, pricing, and product roadmap of a single commercial vendor.
Comparing the engines: A side-by-side look
To make an informed decision, it’s best to compare Valkey against its two distinct alternatives separately. First, let’s look at the core open source engines.
The core engine: Valkey vs. Open source Redis
This comparison is for users choosing a free, self-hosted, open source engine. The key differences lie in performance, licensing, and project governance.
Aspect |
Valkey |
Open source Redis |
Key difference |
| Performance | Utilizes a multi-threaded architecture, offering significantly higher throughput and lower latency on modern hardware | Maintains a predominantly single-threaded architecture. | Valkey has a clear technical advantage for performance-critical applications. |
| License | BSD 3-clause license (Permissive, truly open source). | RSALv2/SSPLv1 (Source-available, with commercial restrictions). | Valkey offers true open source freedom without licensing complexity. |
| Governance | Community-driven under the Linux Foundation, ensuring collaborative and open development. | Vendor-controlled by Redis Inc., aligning development with a single company’s commercial strategy. | Valkey is the choice for those who value a neutral, community-governed project. |
The enterprise choice: Valkey vs. Redis Enterprise
This comparison is for users evaluating a fully-featured platform, weighing the open source ecosystem against an all-in-one commercial product.
Feature |
Valkey |
Enterprise Redis |
Key difference |
| Advanced data types | Provides foundational data structures. Advanced types like JSON or Vector Search are on the roadmap or can be added via community/third-party modules. | Offers native, integrated modules for JSON, Time Series, and Vector Search out of the box. | Redis Enterprise offers a faster, fully integrated path for these features. Valkey provides flexibility, allowing you to choose or build modules, but requires more integration effort. |
| Enterprise security | Includes standard security (ACLs). Advanced features like LDAP/RBAC would require third-party solutions or custom development. | Provides built-in, out-of-the-box LDAP/Active Directory integration and Role-Based Access Control (RBAC). | Redis Enterprise provides features for strict compliance needs. Achieving the same level as Valkey requires custom work or integrating other security solutions. |
| Commercial support | Multiple cloud providers and third-party vendors (e.g., Percona) offer enterprise-grade support, creating a diverse ecosystem. | A commercial SLA is provided directly by a single vendor, Redis Inc. | The choice is between a single-vendor support model from Redis Inc. versus a diverse ecosystem of competing support providers for Valkey. |
How your choice impacts your business: A scenario-based comparison
Your choice of a key-value store directly impacts your product’s performance, cost, and architecture. Here’s a side-by-side look at how these platforms handle critical business challenges.
Use case |
The community-driven approach (Valkey & open source Redis) |
The commercial platform approach (Redis Enterprise) |
| Elevating customer experience (Seamless carts, instant content loads) | This is a core strength. Both provide lightning-fast caching and session management. Valkey has a performance edge due to its multi-threaded architecture, handling more concurrent users with lower latency. You get elite performance without worrying about future license changes affecting your core user-facing infrastructure. | Offers integrated, advanced functionality. While providing the same core speed, Enterprise can accelerate development with native modules like RedisJSON for complex user profiles or Redis Search for faceted search in product catalogs, potentially improving the experience further. |
| Real-time business intelligence (Fraud detection, live dashboards) | Provides a high-performance engine. Valkey can ingest massive data volumes via Streams and Pub/Sub with superior throughput. You build the analytical logic in your application, giving you full control. The open source nature ensures long-term stability for these mission-critical systems. | Provides a purpose-built analytical toolkit. The native Time Series module is specifically designed for this use case, dramatically simplifying the architecture for tracking data over time. This can reduce development time and complexity for creating dashboards or running anomaly detection. |
| Scaling digital commerce (Personalization, ad-bidding) | Scales predictably and cost-effectively. Valkey excels at managing millions of shopping carts and serving catalog data under heavy load. Its permissive license means your costs don’t scale with restrictive terms. Personalization can be built using standard data structures. | Accelerates advanced personalization. The native Vector Search module is a powerful tool for building sophisticated recommendation engines. This is a significant advantage if advanced, AI-driven personalization is key to your strategy |
| Optimizing supply chains (Real-time tracking, inventory) |
Offers control and integration flexibility. Using Geospatial indexes and Pub/Sub, you get real-time visibility. The key value is greater control over deeply embedded systems and easy integration, ensuring operational consistency without vendor surprises. | Enables more powerful, complex queries. Redis Enterprise can leverage Redis Search to run complex queries across inventory and shipment data or use Time Series to analyze logistics performance over time, providing deeper insights without as much application-level code. |
| Delivering interactive services (Chat apps, notifications) | This is a classic open source use case. Pub/Sub is perfectly suited for this, and Valkey’s performance at high concurrency makes it ideal. You get maximum flexibility and efficient cost management for platforms that need to support millions of users. | Adds enterprise-grade management. The core functionality is the same, but Enterprise adds value through features like Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) to manage permissions for different chat rooms or notification channels, which can be critical for B2B applications. |
| Managing IoT data (Sensor data, smart devices) |
Reduces Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) at scale. Using Redis Streams, Valkey provides a highly efficient way to ingest massive amounts of data from millions of devices. The open source license is a huge benefit here, preventing licensing penalties as your device ecosystem grows. | Simplifies IoT application development. The native Time Series module is a perfect fit, handling data ingestion, retention policies, and downsampling automatically. This significantly reduces the engineering effort required to build and manage time-oriented IoT applications. |
What key-value store to choose: A clear decision guide
- Choose Valkey if your priority is a truly open source license (BSD), maximum performance, and a community-driven future. This gives you a powerful, high-throughput data store without fear of vendor lock-in or restrictive licensing, making it the ideal choice for new projects and mission-critical systems.
- Choose Redis Enterprise if you need integrated, proprietary features like native JSON/Vector Search, enterprise-grade RBAC, and a single-vendor support contract, and you are willing to operate within a commercial ecosystem.
- Stick with open source Redis only if you have a legacy system where migration is prohibitive and you are comfortable with its new source-available license and its performance limitations compared to Valkey.
What it all comes down to
Valkey is the open source heir to Redis’s original promise: fast, flexible, and yours to run however you want. If you want peace of mind (no licensing headaches, no vendor gotchas), Valkey is your best bet for the long haul.
But, as with anything, look closely at your own needs for a key-value store.
When you’re ready to take the next step, whether that’s building a business case or conducting a formal technical evaluation, our in-depth guide is your next resource. It explores these topics in greater detail and covers critical factors essential for a complete assessment, ownership costs, migration planning, and long-term security implications.
Redis vs Valkey: Choosing the Right Fit for Your Organization
