head to head · open source
valkey vs jetcache
valkey has 27,613 GitHub stars, 1,516 forks, 894 open issues and last shipped yesterday. jetcache has 5,612 stars, 1,085 forks, 428 open issues and last shipped 12 days ago. valkey leads on adoption by 392% (27,613 vs 5,612 stars). valkey is written in C under BSD-3-Clause; jetcache is written in Java under Apache-2.0. valkey has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, jetcache 19%. valkey was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (cache, 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 | jetcache | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 28K | ★ 5.6K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | C | Java |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-10-24 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.5K | ⑂ 1.1K |
| 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 jetcache if
- You want the jetcache feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and jetcache 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 jetcache
Introduction JetCache is a Java cache abstraction which provides uniform usage for different caching solutions. It provides more powerful annotations than those in Spring Cache. The annotations in JetCache supports native TTL, two level caching, and automatically refresh in distrubuted environments, also you can manipulate instance by your code. Currently, there are four implementations: , (not open source on github), (in memory) and a simple (in memory). Full features of JetCache: Manipulate cache through uniform Cache API. Declarative method caching using annotations with TTL(Time To Live) and two level…
read the full jetcache overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is valkey or jetcache more popular?
valkey has 27,613 GitHub stars and jetcache has 5,612. valkey has the larger community by that measure.
Are valkey and jetcache free?
Both are open source. valkey is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and jetcache under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between valkey and jetcache?
valkey is written in C and jetcache 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 jetcache?
Choose valkey if you want the larger community (27,613 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose jetcache if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.