head to head · open source
valkey vs RedisShake
valkey has 27,258 GitHub stars, 1,318 forks, 894 open issues and last shipped today. RedisShake has 4,434 stars, 780 forks, 153 open issues and last shipped 9 days ago. valkey leads on adoption by 515% (27,258 vs 4,434 stars). valkey is written in C under BSD-3-Clause; RedisShake is written in Go under MIT. valkey has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, RedisShake 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 | RedisShake | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 27K | ★ 4.4K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | C | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-11 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.3K | ⑂ 780 |
| 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 RedisShake if
- You want the RedisShake feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and RedisShake 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 RedisShake
RedisShake is an MIT licensed, Go based data processing and migration tool that moves data between Valkey and Redis deployments, built for operators and platform teams relocating standalone instances, clusters, or cloud hosted Redis compatible services without taking the source offline.
read the full RedisShake overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is valkey or RedisShake more popular?
valkey has 27,258 GitHub stars and RedisShake has 4,434. valkey has the larger community by that measure.
Are valkey and RedisShake free?
Both are open source. valkey is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and RedisShake under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between valkey and RedisShake?
valkey is written in C and RedisShake 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 RedisShake?
Choose valkey if you want the larger community (27,258 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose RedisShake if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.