head to head · open source
valkey vs jedis
valkey has 27,617 GitHub stars, 1,516 forks, 894 open issues and last shipped today. jedis has 12,373 stars, 3,920 forks, 125 open issues and last shipped today. valkey leads on adoption by 123% (27,617 vs 12,373 stars). valkey is written in C under BSD-3-Clause; jedis is written in Java under MIT. valkey has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, jedis 32%. 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.
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Side by side
| valkey | jedis | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 28K | ★ 12K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | C | Java |
| Last push | 2026-11-05 | 2026-11-05 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.5K | ⑂ 3.9K |
| 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 jedis if
- You want the jedis feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and jedis 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 jedis
Jedis What is Jedis? Jedis is a Java client for Redis designed for performance and ease of use. Are you looking for a high level library to handle object mapping? See redis om spring! How do I Redis? Learn for free at Redis University Try the Redis Cloud Dive in developer tutorials Join the Redis community Work at Redis Supported Redis versions The most recent version of this library supports redis version 7.2, 7.4, 8.0, 8.2, 8.4, 8.6, 8.8 and 8.10. The table below highlights version compatibility of the most recent library versions with Redis and JDK versions. Compatibility means communication features, and…
read the full jedis overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is valkey or jedis more popular?
valkey has 27,617 GitHub stars and jedis has 12,373. valkey has the larger community by that measure.
Are valkey and jedis free?
Both are open source. valkey is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and jedis under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between valkey and jedis?
valkey is written in C and jedis in Java. 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 jedis?
Choose valkey if you want the larger community (27,617 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose jedis if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.