head to head · open source
Prometheus vs valkey
Prometheus has 66,133 GitHub stars, 10,846 forks, 890 open issues and last shipped yesterday. valkey has 27,258 stars, 1,318 forks, 894 open issues and last shipped today. Prometheus leads on adoption by 143% (66,133 vs 27,258 stars). Prometheus is written in Go under Apache-2.0; valkey is written in C under BSD-3-Clause. Prometheus has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, valkey 5%. valkey was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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
| Prometheus | valkey | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 66K | ★ 27K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | Go | C |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-09-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 1.3K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Prometheus if
- You weight community size — 66K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick valkey if
- You want the valkey 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 valkey fits your workflow better
About Prometheus
Prometheus is an open source monitoring system and time series database, part of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation ecosystem. It collects metrics from configured targets at defined intervals, evaluates alerting rules, and visualizes results. Designed for reliability in dynamic environments, it operates without reliance on distributed storage, ensuring each server node functions independently.
read the full Prometheus overview →
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 →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Prometheus or valkey more popular?
Prometheus has 66,133 GitHub stars and valkey has 27,258. Prometheus has the larger community by that measure.
Are Prometheus and valkey free?
Both are open source. Prometheus is licensed under Apache-2.0 and valkey under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Prometheus and valkey?
Prometheus is written in Go and valkey 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, Prometheus or valkey?
Choose Prometheus if you want the larger community (66,133 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose valkey if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.