head to head · open source
valkey vs faststream
valkey has 27,258 GitHub stars, 1,318 forks, 894 open issues and last shipped today. faststream has 5,347 stars, 396 forks, 100 open issues and last shipped today. valkey leads on adoption by 410% (27,258 vs 5,347 stars). valkey is written in C under BSD-3-Clause; faststream is written in Python under Apache-2.0. valkey has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, faststream 7%. faststream 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.
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Side by side
| valkey | faststream | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 27K | ★ 5.3K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | C | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.3K | ⑂ 396 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick valkey if
- You weight community size — 27K 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
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 →
About faststream
FastStream is an asynchronous Python framework for event driven services that acts as a thin client for Kafka, RabbitMQ, NATS, Redis and MQTT, giving Python developers full access to native broker features alongside generated AsyncAPI documentation, in memory tests and observability out of the box.
read the full faststream overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is valkey or faststream more popular?
valkey has 27,258 GitHub stars and faststream has 5,347. 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 (27,258 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.