Garnet
Microsoft Research's cache — MIT, and unusually fast under contention.
92
sovereigntyGarnet is a Redis-protocol cache store out of Microsoft Research, written in C#, and its published throughput under high client concurrency is striking — the workload where Redis's single-threaded design shows most. MIT licensed, around 12k stars, used inside Microsoft before release. It is the most permissively licensed serious option here. The caution is ecosystem: a .NET server is an unusual dependency for teams that are not already there, and it is the newest of these by some distance.
OPEN SOURCEMITSELF-HOSTLOCAL-FIRST
LicenseMIT
PricingFree and open source.
Open sourceYes
Self-hostableYes
Local-first dataYes
What it does well
- +MIT — the most permissive licence in this comparison
- +Exceptional throughput under high concurrency
- +Microsoft Research behind it, with real production use
- +Redis protocol compatible, so clients work unchanged
Where it falls short
- −Newest option here with the shortest track record
- −A .NET runtime dependency many teams will not want
- −Smaller community than Valkey or DragonflyDB
- −Not all Redis commands and data types are implemented
Garnet as an alternative to
Where Garnet shows up in our comparisons, and how it ranked.
Garnet head-to-head
Straight comparisons against the tools people weigh it against.