The best In-memory data stores & caching
Every option ranked — open-source, self-hostable, and commercial — by our transparent Sovereignty Score, with honest trade-offs so you choose what fits you, not us.
The cache in front of your database. The category that proved a licence can be taken away — and, unusually, given back.
L3Infrastructure — layer 3 of the AI stack- 1
Valkey
Top pickOpen sourceThe Linux Foundation fork — same Redis, governance that cannot be revoked.
Free and open source. Managed offerings from AWS, Google and others. · in our Redis comparison →
What is Valkey? →96sovereignty - 2
Memcached
Open sourceThe one that only caches — and does it without ceremony.
Free and open source. · in our Redis comparison →
What is Memcached? →95sovereignty - 3
Garnet
Open sourceMicrosoft Research's cache — MIT, and unusually fast under contention.
Free and open source. · in our Redis comparison →
What is Garnet? →92sovereignty - 4
KeyDB
Open sourceThe earlier fork — multithreaded Redis, BSD, now Snap-owned.
Free and open source. · in our Redis comparison →
What is KeyDB? →89sovereignty - 5
DragonflyDB
CommercialRedis-compatible, built for modern multi-core machines.
Free to self-host within BSL terms. Dragonfly Cloud is paid. · in our Redis comparison →
What is DragonflyDB? →70sovereignty
Is it free?
The free tier, its real limits and where you start paying — read from each vendor's own pricing page and dated.
Run these yourself
What each one actually needs — real RAM, honest running cost, and the setup time nobody quotes.
- Self-hosting Valkey Your working set + 30%
- Self-hosting Memcached Exactly the cache size you allocate
- Self-hosting DragonflyDB Working set + 20% — it is meaningfully more memory-efficient than Redis
Replacing a specific tool?
Head-to-head comparisons for each popular in-memory data stores & caching product.
Straight head-to-heads
Two in-memory data stores & caching tools, side by side — verified facts and a plain verdict.