head to head · open source
valkey vs redis-windows
valkey has 27,603 GitHub stars, 1,521 forks, 894 open issues and last shipped yesterday. redis-windows has 4,395 stars, 338 forks, 31 open issues and last shipped 9 days ago. valkey leads on adoption by 528% (27,603 vs 4,395 stars). valkey is written in C under BSD-3-Clause; redis-windows is written in C# under Apache-2.0. valkey has attracted 6% 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.
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Side by side
| valkey | redis-windows | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 28K | ★ 4.4K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | C | C# |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-10-27 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.5K | ⑂ 338 |
| 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 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
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 redis-windows
Redis for Windows Compiled from official Redis source for Windows. Quick Start Usage Option 1: RedisService.exe (Recommended) Automatically handles path conversion. Use native Windows paths. Option 2: redis server.exe (Direct) Important: This build uses Cygwin runtime. Command line paths must use Cygwin format. Path Conversion: In config file: Use forward slashes (Windows style with / ). RedisService CLI Reference Cross Partition/Directories Config, data, and program can be in any location: Data Persistence Data is saved automatically on shutdown. RedisService.exe correctly passes dir to ensure data is saved to…
read the full redis-windows overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is valkey or redis-windows more popular?
valkey has 27,603 GitHub stars and redis-windows has 4,395. 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 (27,603 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.