head to head · open source
Dragonfly vs valkey
Dragonfly has 31,579 GitHub stars, 1,264 forks, 308 open issues and last shipped yesterday. valkey has 27,228 stars, 1,315 forks, 894 open issues and last shipped today. Dragonfly leads on adoption by 16% (31,579 vs 27,228 stars). Dragonfly is written in C++ under a custom or non-standard licence; valkey is written in C under BSD-3-Clause. Dragonfly has attracted 4% as many forks as stars, valkey 5%. valkey was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 4 topic tags (cache, database, key-value, nosql), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| Dragonfly | valkey | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 27K |
| License | Custom / other | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | C++ | C |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.3K | ⑂ 1.3K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Dragonfly if
- You weight community size — 32K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick valkey if
- You want the valkey feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You evaluated both and valkey fits your workflow better
About Dragonfly
Dragonfly is a C++ in memory data store that speaks the Redis and Memcached APIs, built for teams that want more throughput and lower resource use from an existing cache or key value workload without changing application code.
read the full Dragonfly overview →
About valkey
Valkey is high performance data structure server. Serves key/value workloads first. Supports wide range of native structures plus extensible plugin system for new data structures and access patterns. Written in C, licensed BSD 3 Clause. Lives in key value store and NoSQL ecosystem, shares protocol lineage with Redis, and carries cache , database , key value store , redis , valkey client topics.
read the full valkey overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Dragonfly or valkey more popular?
Dragonfly has 31,579 GitHub stars and valkey has 27,228. Dragonfly has the larger community by that measure.
Are Dragonfly and valkey free?
Both are open source. Dragonfly has no licence declared in this registry, and valkey is licensed under BSD-3-Clause. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Dragonfly and valkey?
Dragonfly is written in C++ and valkey in C. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Dragonfly or valkey?
Choose Dragonfly if you want the larger community (31,579 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose valkey if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.