Redis 8.2 is FOSS again, albeit under a different license, and has multiple performance enhancements. Meanwhile, Redis 7.2, the last of the old FOSS versions, is nearing its end of life. New version, or new Valkey?
A new version of the Redis in-memory key-value database is out. Redis 8.2 is now generally available, and it’s got a bunch of performance enhancements. Meanwhile, the previous FOSS release, version 7.2, will reach its scheduled end-of-life date at the end of February 2026, which is now just six months away.
About a year and a half ago, we reported that Redis was changing licenses. The eponymous company changed its license from the permissive BSD-3-clause license to a new dual-license system, MongoDB’s Server Side Public License. At the time, we said: “The change will take effect from Redis version 7.4, and we expect that multiple Linux distributors will drop Redis from their codebases.”
Valkey appeared days later, forked from Redis 7.2.4. In June 2024, The Register reported it was gaining momentum, and nearly a year later, the new project released version 8.1 and the lead developers were planning version 9.
Also in May, in a welcome move, the vendor released Redis 8, and in so doing, relicensed it again. This time around, it uses the GNU AGPL – a relatively restrictive license compared to any of the BSD licenses, but still an official GNU Free Software license and Open Source Initiative approved.
We are not proposing any direct connection here, but the change of heart at Redis followed a few months after the original developer of Redis, Salvatore Sanfilippo – better known in FOSS circles as antirez – chose to return to the company he had left in 2020. He got straight back to work, and a few months later, The Register reported on Redis’s new vector data type.
Redis Ltd makes impressive performance claims for the new Redis 8.2:
Redis 8.2 introduces over 14 new performance & efficiency improvements compared to Redis 8, including up to 35% faster commands, up to 49% more operations per second throughput, and a new internal implementation for storing keys and JSON that reduces memory footprint by up to 67%.
Organizations still using Redis 7.2 face a choice of migration paths: either move to Valkey, or stay with Redis but move to a new major version. Redis 7.4 has about six months longer to live and Redis 7.8 will endure until May 2027, but those versions still aren’t strictly FOSS. For many users, it may depend simply upon what their Linux distro of choice supplies. As examples, RHEL 10 contains Valkey instead, while the newly-released Debian 13 offers a choice: Redis 8.0.2 and Valkey 8.1.1. ®