head to head · open source
valkey vs kombu
valkey has 27,603 GitHub stars, 1,521 forks, 894 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kombu has 3,152 stars, 1,091 forks, 217 open issues and last shipped yesterday. valkey leads on adoption by 776% (27,603 vs 3,152 stars). valkey is written in C under BSD-3-Clause; kombu is written in Python under BSD-3-Clause. valkey has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, kombu 35%. kombu 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 | kombu | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 28K | ★ 3.2K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | C | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-04 |
| 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 kombu if
- You want the kombu feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and kombu 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 kombu
======================================== kombu Messaging library for Python ======================================== :Version: 5.6.2 :Documentation: :Download: :Source: :DeepWiki: deepwiki :Keywords: messaging, amqp, rabbitmq, redis, mongodb, python, queue About ===== Kombu is a messaging library for Python. The aim of Kombu is to make messaging in Python as easy as possible by providing an idiomatic high level interface for the AMQ protocol, and also provide proven and tested solutions to common messaging problems. AMQP is the Advanced Message Queuing Protocol, an open standard protocol for message orientation…
read the full kombu overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is valkey or kombu more popular?
valkey has 27,603 GitHub stars and kombu has 3,152. valkey has the larger community by that measure.
Are valkey and kombu free?
Both are open source. valkey is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and kombu under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between valkey and kombu?
valkey is written in C and kombu 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 kombu?
Choose valkey if you want the larger community (27,603 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose kombu if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.