head to head · open source
valkey vs redigo
valkey has 27,258 GitHub stars, 1,318 forks, 894 open issues and last shipped today. redigo has 9,853 stars, 1,232 forks, 25 open issues and last shipped 11 months ago. valkey leads on adoption by 177% (27,258 vs 9,853 stars). valkey is written in C under BSD-3-Clause; redigo is written in Go under Apache-2.0. valkey has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, redigo 13%. 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 | redigo | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 27K | ★ 9.9K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | C | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2025-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.3K | ⑂ 1.2K |
| 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 redigo if
- You want the redigo feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and redigo 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 redigo
Redigo is an Apache 2.0 licensed Go client library for the Redis and Valkey databases, built for Go developers who need a small, dependency free way to connect their own applications to a Redis compatible server.
read the full redigo overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is valkey or redigo more popular?
valkey has 27,258 GitHub stars and redigo has 9,853. valkey has the larger community by that measure.
Are valkey and redigo free?
Both are open source. valkey is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and redigo under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between valkey and redigo?
valkey is written in C and redigo in Go. 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 redigo?
Choose valkey if you want the larger community (27,258 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose redigo if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.