Redis 8 vs Valkey: The Fork That Split the Caching World

Redis 8 vs Valkey: The Fork That Split the Caching World

Redis Labs changed Redis to a dual license (RSALv2 + SSPLv1). The Linux Foundation forked it as Valkey. Both continue development, but the ecosystem is splitting.

What Valkey Added

–

Multi-threaded I/O: Valkey 8 processes I/O across multiple threads by default, improving throughput by 2-3x for network-bound workloads

–

Over-memory eviction improvements: Smarter eviction under memory pressure

–

RDMA support: Direct memory access for data center deployments

–

True open source: BSD-3 license, no usage restrictions

What Redis 8 Added

–

Vector search: Native vector similarity search (no module needed)

–

JSON improvements: Better RedisJSON performance

–

Triggers and functions: Server-side scripting beyond Lua

Which to Choose

Valkey if you need true open source, run on-premises, or your cloud provider offers it (AWS ElastiCache now defaults to Valkey). Redis if you need vector search, RedisJSON, or use Redis Cloud managed service.