head to head · open source
etcd vs valkey
etcd has 52,276 GitHub stars, 10,510 forks, 351 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. valkey has 27,258 stars, 1,318 forks, 894 open issues and last shipped today. etcd leads on adoption by 92% (52,276 vs 27,258 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 5%. 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 | ★ 27K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | Go | C |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 1.3K |
| 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 is an Apache 2.0 licensed, Go written distributed key value store that holds the most critical data of a distributed system in a Raft replicated log, aimed at the platform and infrastructure engineers who must keep that control plane data consistent and available.
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 etcd or valkey more popular?
etcd has 52,276 GitHub stars and valkey has 27,258. 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 (52,276 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.