head to head · open source
valkey vs faststream
valkey has 27,603 GitHub stars, 1,521 forks, 894 open issues and last shipped yesterday. faststream has 5,391 stars, 418 forks, 100 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. valkey leads on adoption by 412% (27,603 vs 5,391 stars). valkey is written in C under BSD-3-Clause; faststream is written in Python under Apache-2.0. valkey has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, faststream 8%. valkey was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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
| valkey | faststream | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 28K | ★ 5.4K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | C | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.5K | ⑂ 418 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick valkey if
- You weight community size — 28K stars and counting
- You want the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick faststream if
- You want the faststream feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and faststream fits your workflow better
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 →
About faststream
FastStream FastStream is an asynchronous Python framework for building event driven applications. If you know FastAPI , you already know FastStream : the same decorators, type driven validation, dependency injection and generated documentation — pointed at Kafka, RabbitMQ, NATS, Redis and MQTT instead of HTTP. It takes the boilerplate off your hands and leaves your broker intact. \ \ \ Features FastStream simplifies the process of writing producers and consumers for message queues, handling all the parsing, lifecycle and documentation generation automatically. Making streaming microservices has never been…
read the full faststream 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 valkey or faststream more popular?
valkey has 27,603 GitHub stars and faststream has 5,391. valkey has the larger community by that measure.
Are valkey and faststream free?
Both are open source. valkey is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and faststream under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between valkey and faststream?
valkey is written in C and faststream in Python. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, valkey or faststream?
Choose valkey if you want the larger community (27,603 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose faststream if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.