head to head · open source
etcd vs valkey
etcd has 52,441 GitHub stars, 10,552 forks, 351 open issues and last shipped yesterday. valkey has 27,583 stars, 1,540 forks, 894 open issues and last shipped yesterday. etcd leads on adoption by 90% (52,441 vs 27,583 stars). etcd is written in Go under Apache-2.0; valkey is written in C under BSD-3-Clause. etcd has attracted 20% as many forks as stars, valkey 6%. valkey was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (database, key-value), 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
| etcd | valkey | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 52K | ★ 28K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | Go | C |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 1.5K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick etcd if
- You weight community size — 52K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- 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 etcd
etcd Note : The main branch may be in an unstable or even broken state during development. For stable versions, see [releases][github release]. etcd is a distributed reliable key value store for the most critical data of a distributed system, with a focus on being: Simple : well defined, user facing API (gRPC) Secure : automatic TLS with optional client cert authentication Fast : benchmarked 10,000 writes/sec Reliable : properly distributed using Raft etcd is written in Go and uses the [Raft][] consensus algorithm to manage a highly available replicated log. etcd is used in production by many companies, and the…
About valkey
This project was forked from the open source Redis project right before the transition to their new source available licenses. This README is just a fast quick start document. More details can be found under valkey.io What is Valkey? Valkey is a high performance data structure server that primarily serves key/value workloads. It supports a wide range of native structures and an extensible plugin system for adding new data structures and access patterns. Building Valkey using Makefile Valkey can be compiled and used on Linux, macOS, OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD. We support big endian and little endian architectures…
read the full valkey overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is etcd or valkey more popular?
etcd has 52,441 GitHub stars and valkey has 27,583. etcd has the larger community by that measure.
Are etcd and valkey free?
Both are open source. etcd is licensed under Apache-2.0 and valkey under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between etcd and valkey?
etcd is written in Go 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, etcd or valkey?
Choose etcd if you want the larger community (52,441 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose valkey if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.