Valkey
Hacker ApprovedRanked 2 of 6 in-memory data stores by recommenders
Open-source Redis fork recommended for lower AWS costs, speed, Redis compatibility and open governance under a permissive license.
Open-source Redis fork recommended for lower AWS costs, speed, Redis compatibility and open governance under a permissive license.
36 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 31
- criticize it
- 5
- approval share
- 86%
Recommended in 10 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 31 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 6.2 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 10 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Lower costs, especially on AWS
“you can cut your costs in AWS by going with Valkey over Redis for about 33% savings”
Comment from 5 Jun 2026 in “Redis 8.8: New array data structure, rate limiter, performance improvements” “discovered we were saving money on our AWS bill”
Comment from 5 Jun 2026 in “Redis 8.8: New array data structure, rate limiter, performance improvements” “if you are solely on AWS it is a no-brainer”
Comment from 5 Jun 2026 in “Redis 8.8: New array data structure, rate limiter, performance improvements” - Comment from 13 Jul 2026 in “Control the Ideas, Not the Code”
- Comment from 20 Feb 2026 in “Almost Every infrastructure decision I endorse or regret after 4 years”
- Comment from 5 Jun 2026 in “Redis 8.8: New array data structure, rate limiter, performance improvements”
Open license and governance
“The BSD license is why we have Valkey and not a purely closed-source Redis.”
Comment from 30 May 2026 in “Openrsync: A BSD-licensed implementation of rsync, by the OpenBSD team” “I'm glad open tofu and valkey and Linux exist to serve as a counter example”
Comment from 9 Oct 2026 in “Cloudflare acquires Deno” “Better multi-threading, better memory usage, open source, open governance.”
Comment from 23 Jul 2026 in “Cruller: Bun's Zig Runtime, Continued on Zig 0.16” - Comment from 5 Jun 2026 in “Redis 8.8: New array data structure, rate limiter, performance improvements”
- Comment from 26 Aug 2026 in “AWS Acquires DuckLabs”
- Comment from 5 Jun 2026 in “Redis 8.8: New array data structure, rate limiter, performance improvements”
Faster, Redis-compatible replacement
“The coolest outcome was being able to run a redis comparible store on an a cloudflare durable object”
Comment from 8 Jul 2026 in “Rewriting Bun in Rust” “Better multi-threading, better memory usage, open source, open governance.”
Comment from 23 Jul 2026 in “Cruller: Bun's Zig Runtime, Continued on Zig 0.16” “Valkey made me forget redis existed in about a day.”
Comment from 23 Jul 2026 in “Cruller: Bun's Zig Runtime, Continued on Zig 0.16” - Comment from 13 Jul 2026 in “Control the Ideas, Not the Code”
- Comment from 5 Jun 2026 in “Redis 8.8: New array data structure, rate limiter, performance improvements”
- Comment from 25 Jun 2026 in “PostgreSQL Is Enough”
Active community, development moved here
“Valkey and then projects like this stand on the shoulder of giants”
Comment from 1 Jun 2026 in “Show HN: Valdr - Valkey/Redis in safe Rust, passes >99% of Valkey test suite” “all of the new development work happens on Valkey”
Comment from 8 Apr 2026 in “Veracrypt Project Update” “That's a good example of a good community.”
Comment from 13 Feb 2026 in “MinIO repository is no longer maintained” - Comment from 20 Dec 2025 in “Reflections on AI at the End of 2025”
- Comment from 23 Jul 2026 in “Cruller: Bun's Zig Runtime, Continued on Zig 0.16”
Other in-memory data stores people recommend
The four most recommended other in-memory data stores, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Redis | 174 | 102 | 63% | 12 | 10 yrs7 owners | — |
| ValkeyThis page | 31 | 5 | 86% | 10 | — | Approved |
| Memcached | 27 | 10 | 73% | 6 | — | Approved |
| Lux Redis-compatible server | 8 | 7 | 53% | 2 | — | — |
| KiviDB | 7 | 2 | 78% | 1 | — | — |
What people said
37 of the 43 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I'm glad open tofu and valkey and Linux exist to serve as a counter example”
“in recent memory we have Raku, Kodi, Luanti, Valkey, and now Nura.”
“They also support Valkey and pay some of its maintainers.”
“Better multi-threading, better memory usage, open source, open governance.”
“Valkey made me forget redis existed in about a day.”
“Valkey is going strong still.”
“valkey on aws is cheaper for customers too”
“widely replaced by its non-vibe-coded fork Valkey”
“The coolest outcome was being able to run a redis comparible store on an a cloudflare durable object”
“Redis (valkey now for me mostly)”
“Can do fantastically weird stuff with Lua scripts”
“It still has the same problems except for being driven by AI marketing”
“Outages where Valkey had no memory policy, ate all the memory, and then caused write errors to its append-only file.”
“We're planning to go to Valkey for exactly that reason.”
“released under a permissive open source license like redis originally was”
“it's backed by the Linux foundation”
“the easy, low risk path that probably should be the default for most companies”
“Valkey also has support for RDMA, which we already is running in our infrastructure.”
“our cloud provider is hosting it and that's obviously what they prefer”
“I'm much more comfortable with those people maintaining the software.”
“discovered we were saving money on our AWS bill”
“if you are solely on AWS it is a no-brainer”
“It's faster, cheaper and compatible.”
“you can cut your costs in AWS by going with Valkey over Redis for about 33% savings”
“Valkey and then projects like this stand on the shoulder of giants”
“The BSD license is why we have Valkey and not a purely closed-source Redis.”
“Valkey has broken __builtin_ctzll fallback nobody noticed (reported).”
“all of the new development work happens on Valkey”
“that feedback loop is honestly better than any internal dogfooding ive seen at big cos”
“valkey's sorted sets are genuinely underrated for similarity score caching”
“Valkey Serverless is the cheapest option.”
“That's a good example of a good community.”
“I think they should replace Redis with Valkey or even better use rocksdb.”
“I switched to Valkey for that reason.”
“Valkey and OpenSearch at least existing”
“Guess, I'll keep using Valkey.”
“Redis/valkey is definitely overkill though”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.