head to head · open source
go-redis vs miniredis
go-redis has 22,242 GitHub stars, 2,591 forks, 66 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. miniredis has 3,620 stars, 258 forks, 6 open issues and last shipped yesterday. go-redis leads on adoption by 514% (22,242 vs 3,620 stars). go-redis is written in Go under BSD-2-Clause; miniredis is written in Go under MIT. go-redis has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, miniredis 7%. miniredis was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (go, redis), 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| go-redis | miniredis | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 22K | ★ 3.6K |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.6K | ⑂ 258 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick go-redis if
- You weight community size — 22K stars and counting
- You want the BSD-2-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick miniredis if
- You want the miniredis feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and miniredis fits your workflow better
About go-redis
go redis is the official Redis client library for the Go programming language, published as github.com/redis/go redis/v9 under the BSD 2 Clause licence, and it is aimed at Go developers whose applications need to talk to Redis servers.
read the full go-redis overview →
About miniredis
miniredis is a pure Go in memory implementation of parts of the Redis server that speaks a real TCP interface inside a Go unittest process, built for Go developers who need to exercise Redis backed code without running an external Redis instance.
read the full miniredis overview →
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Databases projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Databases field.
Frequently asked questions
Is go-redis or miniredis more popular?
go-redis has 22,242 GitHub stars and miniredis has 3,620. go-redis has the larger community by that measure.
Are go-redis and miniredis free?
Both are open source. go-redis is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and miniredis under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between go-redis and miniredis?
go-redis is written in Go and miniredis in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, go-redis or miniredis?
Choose go-redis if you want the larger community (22,242 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose miniredis if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.