head to head · open source
valkey vs jetcache
valkey has 27,258 GitHub stars, 1,318 forks, 894 open issues and last shipped today. jetcache has 5,613 stars, 1,084 forks, 428 open issues and last shipped 29 days ago. valkey leads on adoption by 386% (27,258 vs 5,613 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 | ★ 27K | ★ 5.6K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | C | Java |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-08-22 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.3K | ⑂ 1.1K |
| 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 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
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 jetcache
JetCache is an Apache 2.0 Java cache abstraction from Alibaba that gives one uniform Cache API and richer annotations than Spring Cache across Redis, Tair, Caffeine, and in memory caches.
read the full jetcache overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is valkey or jetcache more popular?
valkey has 27,258 GitHub stars and jetcache has 5,613. 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 (27,258 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.