Valkey — Open Source Distributed Key-Value Database

What it is

Valkey is a community-driven fork of Redis created after Redis changed its license. Maintained by the Linux Foundation, Valkey is fully compatible with Redis APIs, commands, and data formats. It serves as the open-source successor for Redis workloads including caching, session storage, message queues, and pub/sub.

Valkey targets teams that relied on Redis under its original open-source license and want to continue with a permissively licensed alternative. Existing Redis applications connect to Valkey without code changes.

How it saves time or tokens

This workflow provides installation commands for macOS, Linux, and Docker. Instead of evaluating Redis alternatives and testing compatibility, you get a drop-in replacement that uses the same protocol. Your existing redis-cli, client libraries, and configuration files work as-is.

How to use

1. Install Valkey:

# macOS
brew install valkey

# Debian/Ubuntu
sudo apt install valkey-server

# Docker
docker run -d --name valkey -p 6379:6379 valkey/valkey:8

1. Connect with standard Redis tools:

redis-cli -h 127.0.0.1 -p 6379
> PING
PONG
> SET mykey myvalue
OK
> GET mykey
"myvalue"

1. Point your application's Redis connection string to the Valkey instance. No client library changes needed.

Example

# Python - standard redis-py works with Valkey
import redis

r = redis.Redis(host='localhost', port=6379, decode_responses=True)

# Caching
r.setex('cache:user:42', 3600, '{"name": "Alice"}')

# Pub/Sub
pubsub = r.pubsub()
pubsub.subscribe('notifications')
r.publish('notifications', 'New deployment completed')

# Sorted sets for leaderboard
r.zadd('leaderboard', {'player_a': 100, 'player_b': 85})
top = r.zrevrange('leaderboard', 0, 9, withscores=True)
print(top)

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Common pitfalls

• Valkey 8 diverges from Redis in some cluster management commands. Review the Valkey release notes before upgrading a Redis cluster in place.
• Persistence configuration (RDB snapshots, AOF) uses the same format as Redis. Existing RDB files can be loaded directly by Valkey.
• Some Redis-specific cloud integrations (AWS ElastiCache Redis mode) may not support Valkey directly. Check your cloud provider's compatibility.