# Valkey

31 Hacker News commenters recommended Valkey and 5 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 10 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Open-source Redis fork recommended for lower AWS costs, speed, Redis compatibility and open governance under a permissive license.

## Why people recommend it

- Lower costs, especially on AWS (6 comments): "you can cut your costs in AWS by going with Valkey over Redis for about 33% savings" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48411464)) "discovered we were saving money on our AWS bill" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48412563)) "if you are solely on AWS it is a no-brainer" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48411981))
- Open license and governance (6 comments): "The BSD license is why we have Valkey and not a purely closed-source Redis." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48336215)) "I'm glad open tofu and valkey and Linux exist to serve as a counter example" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50020646)) "Better multi-threading, better memory usage, open source, open governance." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49024356))
- Faster, Redis-compatible replacement (6 comments): "The coolest outcome was being able to run a redis comparible store on an a cloudflare durable object" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48838803)) "Better multi-threading, better memory usage, open source, open governance." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49024356)) "Valkey made me forget redis existed in about a day." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49023326))
- Active community, development moved here (5 comments): "Valkey and then projects like this stand on the shoulder of giants" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48361933)) "all of the new development work happens on Valkey" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47689066)) "That's a good example of a good community." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47001228))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Redis](https://hackerapproved.com/p/redis.md): 174 recommend
- [Memcached](https://hackerapproved.com/p/memcached.md): 27 recommend
- [Lux Redis-compatible server](https://hackerapproved.com/p/lux.md): 8 recommend
- [KiviDB](https://hackerapproved.com/p/kividb.md): 7 recommend
- [DragonflyDB](https://hackerapproved.com/p/dragonfly.md): 5 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Valkey", https://hackerapproved.com/p/valkey/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).