head to head · open source
valkey vs libhv
valkey has 27,258 GitHub stars, 1,318 forks, 894 open issues and last shipped today. libhv has 7,552 stars, 1,365 forks, 41 open issues and last shipped yesterday. valkey leads on adoption by 261% (27,258 vs 7,552 stars). valkey is written in C under BSD-3-Clause; libhv is written in C under BSD-3-Clause. valkey has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, libhv 18%. 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 | libhv | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 27K | ★ 7.6K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | C | C |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.3K | ⑂ 1.4K |
| 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 libhv if
- You want the libhv feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You evaluated both and libhv 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 libhv
libhv is a cross platform C/C++ network library for building TCP, UDP, SSL/TLS, HTTP, WebSocket, MQTT, and Redis clients and servers, written for developers who want the non blocking event loop model of libevent, libev, or libuv with a simpler API and more protocols built in.
read the full libhv overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is valkey or libhv more popular?
valkey has 27,258 GitHub stars and libhv has 7,552. valkey has the larger community by that measure.
Are valkey and libhv free?
Both are open source. valkey is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and libhv under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between valkey and libhv?
valkey is written in C and libhv in C. 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 libhv?
Choose valkey if you want the larger community (27,258 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose libhv if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.