head to head · open source
valkey vs redis-windows
valkey has 27,258 GitHub stars, 1,318 forks, 894 open issues and last shipped today. redis-windows has 4,297 stars, 331 forks, 31 open issues and last shipped yesterday. valkey leads on adoption by 534% (27,258 vs 4,297 stars). valkey is written in C under BSD-3-Clause; redis-windows is written in C# under Apache-2.0. valkey has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, redis-windows 8%. 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| valkey | redis-windows | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 27K | ★ 4.3K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | C | C# |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.3K | ⑂ 331 |
| 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 redis-windows if
- You want the redis-windows feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C#
- You evaluated both and redis-windows 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 redis-windows
Redis for Windows is a Windows native Redis server compiled from the official Redis source, built for developers who need to run Redis on Windows machines without a Linux virtual machine or container.
read the full redis-windows overview →
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Databases projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Databases field.
Frequently asked questions
Is valkey or redis-windows more popular?
valkey has 27,258 GitHub stars and redis-windows has 4,297. valkey has the larger community by that measure.
Are valkey and redis-windows free?
Both are open source. valkey is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and redis-windows under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between valkey and redis-windows?
valkey is written in C and redis-windows 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 redis-windows?
Choose valkey if you want the larger community (27,258 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose redis-windows if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.