Valkey
Open-source, BSD-licensed in-memory key-value data store forked from Redis.
HN commenters like Valkey as a compatible Redis replacement they switched to after the license change1234, citing trust in its maintainers, wide cloud-provider support, and lower costs.5678 Complaints are rare; one commenter notes it is starting to diverge from Redis9, and another uses Kafka instead for data that must persist for days or weeks.10
Why people recommend it
Redis compatibility · 3
Commenters say it works as a Redis replacement for the features they rely on.
“We switched to Valkey two years ago. I haven't really looked back.”
“It's faster, cheaper and compatible.”
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“when I say redis I mean Valkey at this point”
Trusted governance · 3
Some switched over the Redis license change and prefer who maintains Valkey.
“I've switched to Valkey and I'm not really looking back.”
“I've moved away from Redis to Val-Key for same reason”
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“discovered we were saving money on our AWS bill, and have no motivation to go back to Redis.”
Cloud availability · 2
Commenters say cloud hosts such as AWS and Render offer Valkey.
“We switched to Valkey two years ago. I haven't really looked back.”
“It's faster, cheaper and compatible.”
Lower cost · 2
Switchers report lower costs, including a smaller AWS bill.
“discovered we were saving money on our AWS bill, and have no motivation to go back to Redis.”
“It's faster, cheaper and compatible.”
Speed · 2
Commenters describe it as fast.
“It's faster, cheaper and compatible.”
“Redis (or valkey.io) is also amazing and very fast.”
Caveats and dissent
Diverging from Redis · 1
One commenter notes Valkey and Redis are starting to diverge.
“when I say redis I mean Valkey at this point”
Not for persistence · 1
One commenter uses Kafka instead for data that must persist for days or weeks.
“Redis (or valkey.io) is also amazing and very fast.”
Often compared with
Who recommends it in their own words
Threads where it came up
- Redis 8.8: New array data structure, rate limiter, performance improvements 4 mentions
- In Praise of Memcached 1 mention
- I Replaced Kafka, Redis, and RabbitMQ with One Tool – A Deep Dive into NATS 1 mention
- Ask HN: What tech stack would you pick to rebuild HN today? 1 mention
- Turso is an in-process SQL database, compatible with SQLite 1 mention
Data: valkey.json. Quotes are verbatim; the verdict and theme labels are written by a model from these comments, and every clause links to its sources.
All comments 8
“when I say redis I mean Valkey at this point”
“We switched to Valkey two years ago. I haven't really looked back.”
“I've switched to Valkey and I'm not really looking back.”
“discovered we were saving money on our AWS bill, and have no motivation to go back to Redis.”
“It's faster, cheaper and compatible.”
“Redis (or valkey.io) is also amazing and very fast.”
“Spring Boot, HTMX, Postgresql, Valkey, Solr”
“I've moved away from Redis to Val-Key for same reason”