Valkey
Open-source Redis fork under the Linux Foundation with a permissive BSD license.
About
Valkey is the Linux Foundation's BSD-3-Clause fork of Redis, created in March 2024 after Redis Inc. moved Redis off its permissive BSD license to dual SSPL/RSALv2 terms. Backed from day one by AWS, Google Cloud, Oracle, and Ericsson and led by senior Redis maintainers, it forked from Redis 7.2.4 and has since diverged: Valkey 8.1 (March 2025) delivered multi-threaded I/O throughput gains, Valkey 9.0 (October 2025) added hash field TTL, atomic slot migration, and multi-database cluster mode, and 9.1 shipped in May 2026.
Valkey is now the default Redis-compatible server in Ubuntu, Debian, and Fedora, and ships on AWS ElastiCache. Redis Inc. later returned Redis to open source under AGPLv3, so both engines are open again, but Valkey's permissive BSD terms remain simpler for redistributors and cloud vendors. The wire protocol and mainstream clients are unchanged, so most migrations are a one-line image swap.
What it can do
- Redis-compatible wire protocol and commands
- Multi-threaded I/O with high throughput
- Hash field TTL and atomic slot migration
- Cluster mode with multiple databases
- BSD-3-Clause open-source license
Setup
Pull the valkey/valkey Docker image, install from distro packages, or use a managed Valkey on AWS ElastiCache.
Prerequisites
A workload needing in-memory data structures; Redis client libraries work unchanged.
Use cases
Works with
Trust score — 8/10
Scored 8/10 (verified tier, metrics-v1). Evidence: Verified via vendor site/docs/GitHub and reputable coverage, wave 88; Trending score 84/100 from researcher assessment.
Sources
Every fact above was checked against these sources. Where a claim comes from the provider and couldn't be independently verified, the text says so.