head to head · open source
valkey vs jedis
valkey has 27,258 GitHub stars, 1,318 forks, 894 open issues and last shipped today. jedis has 12,369 stars, 3,922 forks, 125 open issues and last shipped today. valkey leads on adoption by 120% (27,258 vs 12,369 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| valkey | jedis | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 27K | ★ 12K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | C | Java |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.3K | ⑂ 3.9K |
| 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 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
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 jedis
Jedis is MIT licensed Java client for Redis, maintained by Redis, that gives JVM applications direct programmatic access to Redis commands and Redis Cluster, aimed at Java developers and teams running Redis in production.
read the full jedis 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 jedis more popular?
valkey has 27,258 GitHub stars and jedis has 12,369. 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 (27,258 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose jedis if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.